


One of the Dangerous Ones

by Love_andbalance



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern: No Powers, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Brief mention of Damerey, Canon Age Difference, Childbirth, Depictions of Child Abuse, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Epistolary, F/M, Graphic depictions of violence - Freeform, Guilty Sexual Feelings, Happy Ending, Homophobia, Human Trafficking, Loss of Innocence, Loss of Trust, Loss of Virginity, Major character death - Freeform, Mental Health Issues, Mentions of Racism, Oral Sex, PTSD, Pregnancy, Prison Violence/Rape is mentioned and threatened, Prison racism, Reconciliation, Religious Conflict, Religious Extremism/Religious Cult, Reylo - Freeform, Reylo endgame, Slow Burn, Teen prositution, The main couple have a child, Therapy, Trauma, Underage Drug Use, Underage Sex, Underage Smoking, Unfair Justice System, Vaginal Sex, age gap, conversion therapy, dark themes throughout, incarceration, mention of past abortion, please read the tags, religious homophobia, underage alcohol use
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-21
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:01:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 26
Words: 88,826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24341002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Love_andbalance/pseuds/Love_andbalance
Summary: Rey Johnson is a pastor's daughter. At eighteen, she is full of bright eyed optimism that prayer and small acts of kindness can make big impacts on the world. She never dreamed that starting a program to send letters to lonely inmates at the nearby state prison would uproot her life and force her to reexamine everything she believed about her faith and humanity.Kylo Ren was a spoiled rich kid with an attitude that his parents didn't have time to tame. When they sent him away into the care of his fanatically religious uncle, they set in motion a chain of events that left his father dead and sixteen year old Kylo on trial for murder. The courtroom dissolved into a media circus and the truth about what really happened was swept under the rug. Now, twelve years later, he is still struggling with his past and the blood on his conscience.When their lives collide, and a change in the law offers Kylo the possibility of another chance at justice, will they be able to find their way into each other's arms? Or was Rey deadly wrong to put her faith in one of the dangerous ones?
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Minor Finn/Rose, Minor Leia Organa/Han Solo - Relationship, Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 869
Kudos: 489





	1. I'll Keep You in My Prayers

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome! Please read the tags before you begin the story, there are many things that I know are triggering for people that I plan to include and I don't want anyone to have a bad experience. I may add more tags as I go, but if that happens I will mention it in the notes when I update so that readers can be notified in advance about things that they may want to avoid. I will also do my best include a brief note at the beginning of each chapter listing the main trigger warnings, if there are any.
> 
> My plan is to update weekly, or at least as often as real life allows!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Therefore, confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective- James 5:16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't think there's anything in this chapter that needs a more specific trigger warning than what is included in the fic tags, but if you see something that you think should be included here for future readers, please drop me a comment.

__

_Summer 2015_

“Hey, Ren, you’ve got a letter.” The words were casual, without any trace of humor or mockery, but they sent a flood of rage through Kylo’s mind just the same.

“That’s not fucking funny, Hux. Jesus, you know I don’t get mail. You’ve been here three fucking years already. You should know that shit.”

“I’m serious. It’s got your name on it.” His cellmate held up the envelope in his right hand and waved it around at eye level.

“Lemme see it,” Kylo demanded, bounding up from his bunk and stretching out a hand.

Hux handed it over, and Kylo scanned the front of the envelope with a frown. It was white and plain. Nothing suspicious about it. Just the prison address, a stamp emblazoned with a waving red, white, and blue flag, a return address bearing a name he didn’t recognize that had been written in a looping feminine script…but scrawled across the front were thick block letters written in black marker. Clearly added after the original writing, the last letter of it even covering the corner of the stamp, were two words.

His name.

Kylo Ren.

“The fuck?”

“I don’t know, man," Hux said with a shrug. "You’ve got to open it.”

“Yeah? Well, no shit, genius. I haven’t been in here so long I’ve forgotten how letters work. Fucking moron,” Kylo snapped, but he stood for a moment tapping the letter against his thigh just the same.

Hux said nothing else, more than used to his cellmate’s short temper after so many years and never impressed by the quick and violent losses of self-control. Kylo had never met anyone as cold and calculating as Hux, and he had known more than a few people who were seriously fucked up, even before he landed himself in this hellhole.

Maybe it had been too many years of getting his ass kicked as a kid for having a skinny frame and liquid paper white skin with garishly red hair, but Hux was hardened asshole to the bone. Kylo knew his cellmate would have happily slit his throat if it meant a few extra bucks for commissary or a pack of cigs, but that was just Hux.

It wasn’t personal.

He sat down on his bunk, holding the letter up to analyze it before taking out the contents. It had been opened already, obviously, and everything inside already read and analyzed for potential threats or clues of misconduct.

Fucking nosy pigs.

When was the time anyone had bothered to write him? Surely it hadn’t been long after the trial. The letters of support had stopped rolling in once the verdict came down.

Maybe they couldn’t sympathize anymore, or maybe it was because the news stopped blasting his face nonstop across every goddamned channel, but either way he had lost all contact with the outside world a long time ago.

Even the emails and phone calls from his lawyers had mostly stopped coming over the years as he exhausted his appeals.

He sat on the bunk, ignoring Hux’s curious stare- there was never a single moment of fucking privacy in this place, can’t even take a shit without the whole world knowing- and tore the top off the envelope.

The letter inside was written on a single sheet of clean lined paper, folded in even thirds and composed in the same dark black ink and feminine handwriting that had been used to write the addresses on the envelope.

_Dear inmate of the French M. Robertson Unit,_

_I realize you don't know me, and I don’t know you, but I am hoping that this letter might change that. I hope that it finds you well and you are willing to at least read it and consider the offer of friendship that it contains._

_I wish I knew your name. I am sure that receiving mail addressed to ‘inmate’ did not begin our relationship on a very friendly note. But I can give you my name, and hope that it begins to make amends and let you view this correspondence in a more positive light. I’m Rey._

_I volunteer with my local church, specifically the women's prayer group. We call it our Biblical Warrior's Group. We meet on Wednesday evenings to pray and organize our efforts for various charities and such. I’m the new group leader, actually, but I suppose that's not likely to be the type of thing to be of much interest to you._

_Anyway, one of our members, her name is Rose, has a cousin that has spent the last few years in the same facility that you're in now. He’s due to be released soon, but he mentioned that some of you don't have anyone on the outside to write to._

_That sounded like a terribly lonely way to live, so I organized a letter writing campaign through the warden. Each member of my prayer group wrote a letter, and the prison distributed them to those who seemed most in need of a friendly pen pal._

_My letter found its way to you._

_I hope that you’ll write back and let me offer you some semblance of comfort and friendship during your stay in prison, however long that may be._

_I will keep you in my prayers,_

_Rey_

Kylo ran a hand through his hair in frustration, and the thick black waves ruffled back down, curling over the collar of his white jumpsuit. It was one of the great ironies of his life, that he’d had to go to prison to be able to wear his own hair the way he wanted to.

He looked around the cell, taking in the dirt and the grime and the peeling paint. The whole place had an aura of filth. It smelled like piss and industrial strength cleaning products. He had cigarettes stashed in his toilet, for Christ’s sake.

Whoever this lady was, she clearly had no clue about how anything fucking worked in the real world.

She’d keep him in her prayers? Fuck that. He’d already seen how little prayer could do. At best, God didn’t exist. At worst, he was a sadistic fuck who got off on the suffering that he let run rampant in innocent people’s lives.

“Well?”

Kylo crumpled the letter in his hand. “Just a pity letter from some uppity religious bitch who thinks she can save my soul,” he said bitterly.

_***_

The heat was brutal in the late afternoon. There was no place to hide from the Texas sun, and the temperature had been in the triple digits for weeks already.

Rey popped out the mailbox, just a short trip to the end of the dirt driveway and back, but even that was enough to have sweat dripping down her sides and a flush rising in her cheeks. She was wearing a loose blue sundress, the nearest to naked that a decent woman could be while lounging on a Sunday afternoon, and it was still clinging damply her skin as she hurried back to the house.

She’d have to make a pitcher of sweet tea this evening before her dad came home, she thought. The air conditioning at the church wasn’t always reliable and he liked to sit outside on the shaded front porch in the evenings, sipping on a cold drink and watching the lightening bugs dance through the yard.

Things cooled off a touch once the sun went down. If they were lucky, they might even get a faint breeze.

This time of year, everything smelled like honeysuckle, and even though she was a bit too old for such things, she plucked a white blossom from the vine near the door. A quick twist at the end to separate the petals and a downward tug pulled the stamen out, bringing with it a single drop of clear nectar that danced sweetly across her tongue.

She let the screen door slam behind her and padded across the hardwood floor in her now dirty bare feet.

She plopped down at the kitchen table, flipping through mail and breathing a sigh of relief as the ceiling fan circulated cool air over her.

Junk mail. Bills. A thank you card from a parishioner that was addressed to her father.

Her hand stilled on the last item, buried at the bottom of the pile.

The envelope had her name on it. The words were all inscribed neatly in blue ink, the kind that reminded her of cheap Bic pens like the ones they use at the bank downtown because they know everyone steals them.

There’s no return address.

She walked slowly to the desk in her father’s office, chewing nervously on her lower lip the whole way. There’s really only one thing this could be, and the person who wrote it might not be entirely friendly. None of the other women in the prayer group have gotten their responses back yet, so they’re all unsure if their attempts to communicate had been welcome by the recipients.

She quick slide of a silver letter opener under the seal and she's pulled out half a sheet of white legal paper. Whoever tore it off must have done so quickly because the edges are ragged and uneven.

_Rey,_

_Your letter did find its way to me, but next time you write you should ask the warden to give it to someone else. I'm not one of the inmates that landed himself in prison for tax fraud or stealing some old grandma's pension. Save your prayers for someone who deserves them._

_I'm one of the dangerous ones._

_Kylo Ren_


	2. I'm Not Afraid

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> God did not give us a spirit of fear, But of power, love, and self control- 2 Timothy 1:7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I added a few new tags, please make sure that you are being gentle with yourself and avoiding any potentially triggering content.
> 
> Specific potential TW/CW for this chapter:
> 
> Rey's church group meeting includes a lady that behaves unkindly toward Rose and the girls speculate about her possibly being racist and how they should handle it.
> 
> We are also going to get a little bit deeper into prison life in this chapter. There will be violence, racially divided hatred and attitudes, and the mention of the potential of sexual assault.
> 
> I also forgot to add the date to the first chapter when I initially posted it, so if you are back after having read the first chapter previously, please note that the story begins in the summer of 2015!

Her father's church was one of Rey’s favorite places.

The linoleum in the hallways was cracked and peeling and the bright yellow paint on the nursery walls needed to be redone soon,but none of that could diminish the comfort she felt every time she walked through the doors. She had spent so many hours of her childhood in this small building that it was like a second home.

Her mother had been a pastor’s wife, and that came with a certain sense of duty. She brought a young Rey with her as devoted her days to record keeping in the office, baking up goods in the kitchen to be delivered for elderly neighbors, teaching Sunday school in the nursery as Rey sat on the floor and listened to fantastical tales of rainbow colored coats and boats big enough to hold two of every animal in the whole world.

Rey had loved it all, but nothing had compared to the last one. For a lost and frightened child, the promise of miracles and God’s love had been a profound revelation. She wanted nothing more in life than to make the same positive impact on the lives of others as mother had made, and she intended to start right here with this same congregation.

The first of tonight’s prayer group members had arrived and was already looking around and nodding her head in approval at the decorations and snacks that Rey had spent several hours preparing.

“Rey, honey, your mama would have just been so proud of you and all the work you’ve done here. We haven’t been this organized and full of God given enthusiasm to do good in this world since she died. God rest her soul, of course,” she finished, patting Rey’s hand a bit too hard as she shuffled by to take her seat in the circle.

Mrs. Kanata was a sweet white-haired woman in her late seventies that wore the thickest glasses Rey had ever seen. Firmly independent and spirited, she always smelled like nipped afternoon rum cake and old woman.

Rey adored her.

Others followed soon after, and the room quickly filled with women, all talking and snacking on cookies and lemonade.

It was a diverse group, for such a small town. There were young girls just graduated from high school, like Rose and herself, recent brides still flush with the joy of new love, tired moms with hastily wiped spit up stains on their shirts, and women that were old enough to be grandmothers and hand off advice to the rest of them that wasn’t always entirely welcome.

It provided a sense of community, a connection that each of them had come to be profoundly grateful for. Talk moved quickly over the latest town news- a pregnancy, a death, an amicable divorce. Someone mentioned the often hoped for dream that they might someday get a Taco Bell in town, and Rey couldn’t help but smile.

They’d been hearing that rumor for five years now and still had to drive all the way to Abilene for a late-night burrito.

She let them rumble along aimlessly for a few minutes before clearing her throat and standing up from her orange plastic chair to call the group to attention.

“We’ve got a lot to cover tonight,” she began when all eyes had landed on her. “We have the upcoming bake sale to raise money for the food pantry, the Fourth of July celebration that still needs volunteers to work the tables, and Rose has suggested that we might want to consider starting now to gather donations of school supplies for the kids when classes start back up in the fall.”

Almost everyone nodded and she knew that Rose’s newest project would also be a success. She shot her best friend a quick, beaming smile before continuing.

“The first thing on the agenda, though, is to check on those who chose to participate in writing letters to the inmates and see if they’ve gotten a letter back? I got mine in the mail yesterday,” Rey confirmed, holding the envelope up in front of the group.

Mrs. Nu sniffed indelicately. Middle aged and still beautiful, she had been a regular church volunteer since her youngest child had left for college two years ago. She had been violently opposed to Rose’s suggestion to begin with, refusing to participate and quoting fire and brimstone punishment to everyone who would listen when the project had first been mentioned.

“Felons”, she had insisted, “will meet their justice at the hands of God. We, as a group, must be vigilant in not allowing these criminals access to our hearts and minds. Their dark thoughts are corruptive and have the ability to let the devil into our lives.”

Everyone had ignored her then, and Rey ignored her now, though she noticed Rose’s eyes narrow as she reached for her own letter. She hadn’t been the only one to notice Mrs. Nu’s behavior.

One by one each of the other ladies held up a similar envelope to the one in Rey’s hand.

“That’s incredible. Did anyone have any problems? Issues?” Rey scanned the group, but everyone shook their heads, denying any upsetting interaction with the prisoners. All had been polite in their responses and most had seemed genuinely grateful for the chance to interact with someone outside of the prison. “The Lord must have ensured that our letters found their way into the right hands," Rey concluded as she tucked her letter back in her pocket.

The rest of the meeting went smoothly, and soon the only people left were Rey, Rose, and Kaydel. The three of them were the only members of their graduating class that attended this church.

“I can’t decide if Mrs. Nu is just a huge prude who hates me because I want us to actually help people in trouble, or if she’s legit a racist and she hates me because my family is Vietnamese,” Rose muttered angrily as she stacked the orange chairs neatly in the corner.

“Both,” Rey and Kaydel responded in unison.

“Mrs. Nu is sneaky about it,” Rey continued, “and gets away with a lot because she gives everyone a bad attitude and that makes it easier to hide, but I think it’s both. She was horrible to Jannah, too, before she went off to college.”

Rose nodded, “That was before I moved here and started dating Finn, but if she’s as much like her little brother as she seemed to be when I met her, I’m sure Jannah didn’t put up with anything from Mrs. Nu even back then."

“She didn’t,” Kaydel confirmed. “Jannah doesn't put up with anything from anyone and was horrible to her right back. Anytime Mrs. Nu complained, everyone always pretended they hadn’t heard a word of what Jannah said to her. The only one who got reprimanded was Mrs. Nu.”

“The lesson doesn’t seem to have stuck,” Rey mused. “If she makes you uncomfortable, I can ask her not to come back. I’m in charge of the group now.”

Rose pondered that for a moment. “No, not yet. If she does anything more obnoxious than whine about my projects then you can, but I would rather her see the success of the programs for herself. She needs to know she was wrong, about the programs and me.”

Rey gave her a little hug, “Are you sure? This group needs you and your amazing vision more than it needs that awful woman. You don’t to have to prove anything to her.”

“I’m sure,” Rose said, hugging her back before tossing the last of the used paper cups in the trash. “I don’t want her to cause there to be bitterness in my heart, but I do kind of want to watch her sit in her own misery every week, knowing she can’t stop us from doing good things and being kind to people. Is that wrong?”

Rey shrugged. “I don’t think so, if she’s miserable because of that it’s because she brought it on herself.”

Kaydel nodded in agreement and they went back to working in silence for a few minutes.

“So, I noticed you didn’t say anything about the guy who got your letter,” Kaydel said, looking over her shoulder at Rey and changing the subject as she wiped down a table.

Rey reached her hand into her pocket and rubbed her fingers over the stiff paper. “Oh, yes… well I haven’t decided yet if I should write him back or ask the warden to send my next letter to someone else.”

“What?” Rose said in surprise. “I thought you said it seemed like our letters went to the right people?”

“I didn’t want to worry the other ladies and put a damper on your project, Rose. It was a good idea and I don’t want anyone to stop participating.”

“I guess that’s understandable, but did he say something mean to you?” Rose looked ready to fight, and Rey loved her for it.

“No, he barely said anything to me at all,” Rey admitted. “Just that he thinks I should write to someone else. He says he’s dangerous, but he didn’t give me any more information than that.”

Rose began to look skeptical at that news, but Kaydel just shook her head. “He’s in prison. We knew they might be dangerous, right?”

Rey had to admit that was a good point. She had gone into this because she wanted to reach someone that might otherwise have been unreachable. After all, someone had once reached out to her, taken on a difficult challenge with no promise that things would work out in the end, and it had made all of the difference to Rey.

“I’ll pray on it, and ask God for guidance,” Rey promised them, and the conversation turned to Rose’s boyfriend and Kaydel’s excitement about starting college in a few months. Rey listened with a smile as they chattered happily. These girls were a blessing in her life, and she was convinced that God had helped them find each other, knowing that they would help guide one another through life’s challenges.

Perhaps that's what He had planned for Kylo Ren, she realized. Maybe he needed someone in his life to encourage him and guide him toward God.

She had gone over every inch of his letter several times since it arrived yesterday, looking for clues to what kind of person had written it. The evidence didn’t paint much of a picture, just neat handwriting and evidence that he lived as she imagined a prisoner would- cheap pens and scraps of paper that smelled vaguely of cigarette smoke.

There was nothing to tell her about what kind of man he was, or how he spent his days, or what he had done to deserve being sent to prison- but she did know that he must be lonely if no one wrote to him.

***

_3:30 am_

His body didn’t need the wake-up call anymore. After so many years on the same schedule, his brain clicked on at exactly the same time every morning, allowing him just a few seconds to orient himself to his surroundings before the rest of the prison began to stir.

He dressed in silence, neither him nor Hux needing any chatter to start their day. There was no need to think about what to wear, inmates were all stripped of their individuality and made as indistinguishable from one another as possible in white jumpsuits and black shoes.

They filed together into the dining hall to be greeted by a breakfast of questionable oatmeal, browning apple slices, and shitty black coffee- all served precisely at 4:30 and eaten elbow to elbow on long metal tables. They ate in silence as well, though this was as much from habit as lack of desire. Talking during mealtime was prohibited.

Hux shoveled his food down methodically, apparently well trained by the atrocious meals served in the public-school system, but Kylo fought down a sneer. Years of living on this swill still hadn’t been enough to get past his early years spent dining on personal chef prepped dinners and private school lunches.

By 6:00 am they had been shuffled along with most of the other inmates to their shift in the prison’s garment factory. The shifts were long, twelve hours a day, and the work was hot, sweaty, and miserable- it was also mandatory.

Every able-bodied prisoner was required to work. Some worked the kitchens, or the laundry unit, and a lucky few even got to work outdoors in the garden. The rest came here, to a large room that was loud and busy and filled with complicated machinery and rows of sewing machines, where they would spend their sentences making clothing and textiles that would be used in their prison and others around the state.

They got paid nothing, Texas didn’t bother giving their inmates actual financial compensation for their labors, but while the other inmates were hoping that they might at least earn time credits for an earlier release date or a good behavior stamp that would increase their chances of parole, Kylo only benefitted from having something to do, a way to kill the endless stream of time that threatened to drive him mad.

It was a good system for the prison, profiting from the labor under the guise of giving the prisoners job skills and a way to pay for their own room and board, but it was an obvious labor scam. At least his work went toward the prison itself and he wasn’t sewing bras for Victoria’s Secret.

He settled in behind an industrial sized sewing machine, and the hours passed in a blur of stitching on white fabric. There was only a short break for lunch-if two hot dogs with sauerkraut tossed on top, a slice of white bread, and a scoop of cold canned carrots could really be qualified as a meal-to break up the monotony until late in the afternoon.

He glanced up from his machine as the sickening sound of violent blows on flesh erupted behind him, barely audible the roar of the machines despite the proximity of the beating that was happening in the row behind him.

A young man was curled up on the floor, arms wrapped protectively around his head as an older inmate with a shaved head and a swastika tattooed on his neck rained down a series of vicious kicks.

“You think you can fucking touch me? You think you can get away with fucking bumping into me and not paying attention to where you’re going, you dumb piece of shit? You worthless fucking n-” The racial epithet was cut short as the guards finally reached him and wrenched him away from his victim.

He left the room in restraints, destined for disciplinary action that likely meant nothing to a man already serving a life sentence.

The young man he assaulted was sent to the medical ward for stitches and ibuprofen, blood running over his dark skin and onto his white uniform.

Kylo went back to his sewing.

There was nothing he could have done to help that wouldn’t have just made things worse for the kid and gotten himself written up, too. The kid was new, and he was going to have to get hard or do his time with a target on his back. He was lucky that this had been a simple beating, instead of a stabbing or worse.

Sexual assaults were the subject of almost every joke he had ever heard about prison life, but they were a terrifying reality in here. The absence of women and the presence of rapists and sadists made prison a living hell for anyone identified as an easy target.

There were cameras everywhere and the guards patrolled constantly, monitoring for the ever present contraband or signs of violence that might spring from the tension that was never far from the surface, but it wasn’t enough. It didn’t stop the assaults, or the beatings, or the drugs. Prisoners were nothing if not inventive, and the had plenty of time for scheming, especially if they considered the reward sufficient.

The guards didn’t run this prison, the gangs did. Though Kylo had resisted the pressure to join up with any specific gang within the prison, having had his fill of that bullshit before getting arrested, plenty of others hadn’t.

The gang activity was based in racial division and layered on top of a culture that hinged on respect. The slightest misstep was enough for a man to end up dead, and sometimes just the way you looked was enough, as the kid currently getting stitched up had just found out the hard way.

By the time they made it back to the day room, Kylo was in a bad mood. He opted, as he most often did, to skip the limited opportunity that they had for TV time or social interaction and withdrew to his cell.

He preferred to use his time for more artistic endeavors, and lately he had taken up calligraphy. Paper, like everything else at the commissary, was exorbitantly expensive but at least his stone-cold cunt of a mother kept his commissary card full every month, even if she hadn’t spoken a word to him since he was fifteen years old.

The motion of the pen as it traced smooth lines over the paper was soothing, it helped him to block out the world and his own seething anger and restless energy. Everyone in here had something that helped keep them sane. Some had drugs, Hux had a surprising love for reality TV, and Kylo had art.

He ignored his cellmate when Hux finally threw himself down on his bunk not long before lights’ out.

“Looks like I got a letter from my brother,” Hux mused, rustling the day’s mail in his hands.

“Hmm,” Kylo hummed noncommittally.

Hux said nothing, just tossed a letter onto Kylo’s bunk with a smirk.

He sighed, holding it up to find that she had written his name on the envelope herself this time. She was obnoxiously persistent.

He knew the type. She was probably middle aged and mousy, sure that her own husband and children were flawless and therefore convinced that she knew how to fix everyone else’s problems, too.

One of his childhood friends, the rich kind that he had known before he was sent to Luke, had a mom exactly like that. They used to get high in the garage together while his dad fucked the babysitter.

After a moment’s hesitation, he pulled out the letter, curiosity getting the better of him but still prepared to be overwhelmed by sanctimonious lecturing.

_Kylo,_

_I don’t know what you did to be in prison, but I do know that whatever it was, it doesn’t mean that you have to be lonely for the rest of your life. Everyone needs someone in their life to care about them._

_I think you wrote that last letter to try and scare me, though I'm not sure why. It worked for a little while, but I know that God commands me not to fear and to love my neighbor as I love myself. All of my neighbors, not just the ones that go to church on Sundays or spend their free time stealing their grandmother's pensions, (That was a joke! See, I can even be funny!)_ _._

_I think I am a pretty good friend to have, and my friends agree. I’m not afraid and I_ _would like to continue to write you if you don’t mind?_

_Rey_

He didn’t know what to think about this lady and her odd determination to put herself at risk trying to be friends with a dangerous stranger, but something about her response bothered him. He had signed his letter with his real name, hoping to frighten her when she realized the extent of the crimes he had been convicted for, but she hadn’t responded to that information at all.

The story of his trial had been plastered all over the TV for months. He didn’t think there was a single person in the whole country that didn’t know his name and his face by the time it was all over. 

He ran the possibilities over in his mind. There was only one that made any sense.

He wrote a single sentence before stuffing the slightly crumpled piece of paper in an envelope.

_How old are you?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The French M. Robertson Unit is a real maximum security prison near Abilene, Texas. Information about the prison uniforms, mandatory labor without pay, and daily schedule is all correct according to the Texas Department of Justice website. There really is a garment factory in this prison and they really do make clothing and textiles to be used by the prison system.


	3. A Family Demolished

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fathers do not embitter your children, or they will become discouraged- Colossians 3:21

Rey’s brows drew together in consternation as she sat, curled comfortably in the center of her bed, and read Kylo’s most recent letter.

_You’re a child and whoever allowed someone as young and naïve as you to write to dangerous prisoners is a fucking idiot. You’d know that if you were even old enough to remember who the hell I am. It’s not like what I’ve done was some sort of secret. Go back to your church group, little girl, and save yourself the trouble. You shouldn’t be talking to monsters like me._

There was no greeting, no signature, and it was so short that it was bordering on terse, but she seemed to be making some progress. At least it was a full paragraph, instead of one line like the last one.

She’d been flabbergasted by that last letter.

_How old are you?_

Receiving a reply at all had been somewhat surprising, but if he was going to write she had expected more than one blunt question with no context. 

She’d answered in the same way, not willing to give him the satisfaction of asking for an explanation.

_I’m eighteen_

She sighed and bit down gently on the end of her pen, running her tongue over the tip as she rescanned this most recent correspondence with a frown. He seemed terribly upset about discovering her age, if the liberal sprinkling of offensive language was any indication, though she couldn’t begin to understand why.

She was a grown woman, perfectly capable of handling herself in the world, despite his apparent opinion to the contrary.

_Little girl_

Hmph

Still, he seemed unreasonably determined to scare her off and this letter definitely seemed to be hint that what he had done was bad enough that he might even have made the news at some point or another. At least, it was if she was correctly interpreting the cryptic remark about his crimes not being a secret.

Maybe…

She dropped the letter on the bed beside her, letting the paper with his neat masculine handwriting flutter down to land on a white blanket patterned with small roses in her favorite colors of blue and yellow, and reached for her laptop. Her jaw dropped as a simple search for the words “Kylo Ren” brought up more than half a million results.

She scanned the top few, all of which were news stories with horrifying headlines-

“ _Gruesome Crime Rocks Nation”_

_“Shocking Violence Among America’s Elite”_

_“Skywalker Heir Ben Solo Legally Changes Name Before Trial Begins”_

_“Teen Killer Kylo Ren Faces Justice”_

She placed a hand on her stomach, fighting the urge to be sick as the last headline jumped off the screen and swam dizzyingly in front of her eyes.

“ _A Family Demolished- How Patricide Destroyed a Legacy_ ”

Patricide…

Her mind flashed to the only parents she could remember- the father who loved her, the mother she had lost. Kylo Ren really was a monster. He hadn’t even bothered to try and deny it.

She slammed the laptop closed, only to reopen it seconds later and peer intently at the small thumbnail image next to the first article. The boy in the photo stared back at her without remorse.

He might have been handsome if she hadn’t known what he’d done. Wavy black hair framed a long face with defined cheekbones and a nose prominent enough that it would have made his appearance harsh if his lips hadn’t been so full. She felt like his eyes should have been dark, but realized that though they were hard and emotionless, they were a deceptive warm amber in color.

Why would God have guided her letter someone like this?

Unable to ignore her burning curiosity, she scrolled the results, skimming past the YouTube videos of old news reports for now, and filling her screen with still images.

Her eyes scanned the page, taking in a series of pictures. In each of them he looked young, even childlike, but his eyes were always just as cold.

She bit her lip as she considered his mugshot- a boy with dark circles under his eyes and hair that was cropped too close on the sides, revealing ears that were just a touch too big. There was no fear on his face, none of the terror that she knew she would be experiencing if she was in his place.

His face was just as impassive in a newspaper photo of him wearing a blue prison jumpsuit as he stepped out of the back of police car, flanked by officers with stern expressions. The cuffs on his wrists and ankles were connected by a long chain that made his attempt to stand look awkward and emphasized how he appeared to be all youthful lanky arms and legs.

She almost laughed sadly at a court drawing of him in a black suit, an obvious but failed attempt at making him look mature and responsible for the jury. He didn’t look old enough to attend prom, much less be on trial for committing a serious crime.

Her amusement faded when she found the only one at all that showed a smile on his face. A candid home photo of him as child in front of a Christmas tree, arms wrapped around the waist of an older man with an identical grin- his father she realized with a jolt.

The man he murdered.

She simply didn’t understand how anyone could do such a thing to another person. He looked so happy in that Christmas photo- his grin so enthusiastic, his hug so pure.

The shadows on her walls grew long and the sun sank below the horizon as she sat on her bed with its pretty floral blanket, searching the internet’s memory as though it might have answers to a mystery that humanity itself still hadn’t solved.

What makes someone a killer?

The media had done their best to find out while he was on trial, scouring through every inch of his personal life searching for one incident that might have explained it all. They interviewed his friends, his acquaintances, his teachers…none of them had answers. He was a decent kid- maybe a bit lonely, a bit wild and prone to mischief, but never violent.

That hadn’t stopped the reporters from digging, turning over every facet of his life, his family’s lives.

She would have only been five when he was arrested, too young to remember the story, but the whole thing seemed to have been quite the scandal. There didn’t seem to be anything about his life that wasn’t splashed across the front page of some magazine or newspaper.

He had been born Ben Solo, the only child of a career politician and her handsome playboy husband. His mother, Leia Organa, had been adopted into a wealthy family and Ben had been raised in the lap of luxury, surrounded by the finest things that money could buy. 

If the media’s assessment of his early years was to be believed, he was a spoiled rich kid that had been provided with the best education, the best homes, the best expensive vacations.

His family was small- a father, a mother, an uncle- but they were reported to have been close and happy. There was no sign of problems, despite the fact that his mother and her twin, apparently infamous Evangelical pastor Luke Skywalker, had been adopted and raised by different families. The pair hadn’t discovered one another until they were already adults.

Hmmm…that had apparently been its own small scandal.

Luke and Leia’s father had not been a popular man. A wealthy, powerful, but apparently corrupt businessman turned politician in his own right, it seemed he had been sent to prison for his connection to his wife’s death when the twins were still infants.

It didn’t seem likely that murderous tendencies could be genetically inherited, but the fact still gave her pause.

It had done some serious damage to Leia’s political career early on when her true parentage had been discovered by the press, but though her presidential ambitions had been permanently destroyed she had rallied well enough to move on and become a senator.

There were photos of her, too. There didn’t seem to much of her in Kylo-he obviously got his looks from his father- but Leia was beautiful. A petite woman with a charming smile, she appeared determined and sophisticated as she stood beside her family at press conferences and political events. 

There was never a hair out of place or a jacket wrinkle to be seen, even if she had been dealing with an ancestry that she was ashamed of and a husband who, by all accounts, had been less than faithful.

That shimmering public image hadn’t helped Kylo during the trial. The press hadn’t considered his grandfather’s crimes or his parents’ failing marriage to be enough to garner him any sympathy nor did most of the public. His only supporters seemed to have been young women impressed by his looks or his fortune, and they had been widely mocked for their willingness to overlook his crimes for a pair of pretty eyes.

Every reporter, new anchor, and celebrity that had deigned to weigh in on the subject-which had been almost all of them- had deemed him a spoiled brat with an anger problem that deserved to rot in prison and never again see the light of day.

Rey thought he was a spoiled rich kid that obviously needed better lawyers.

His mother, understandably upset about the circumstances of his arrest, had apparently refused to pay for his legal team, and his public defenders had done extraordinarily little defending.

There was never even an attempt made to claim that he hadn’t committed the crime of which he had been accused. It was freely acknowledged that Ben, now Kylo Ren after he changed his name to distance himself from his family, had stabbed his father seventeen times in a dimly lit alley in Houston.

His reason, told through his lawyers because they didn’t allow him to take the stand, was rooted in family problems. There had apparently been prior behavioral issues, and his parents had sent him to live with his uncle, a decision that Kylo had not handled well. 

When his father finally tracked him down after he had spent six months living on the streets with a group of runaways, he hadn’t wanted to return. There had been an altercation and it had gotten out of hand. They portrayed him as an impulsive child, panicking over a punishment and lashing out without thinking.

The jury hadn’t seen it that way- it had taken them only three hours to return with a verdict.

Guilty.

He was sentenced to life, without the possibility of parole, at the age of sixteen.

There were plenty of videos from inside the courtroom since the trial itself was well televised, and his reaction- or lack thereof- to the verdict had been the cause of speculation for weeks.

He had stood beside his lawyers, clean cut and stoic in his suit, as the rest of his life was taken from him. There had been no tears, no sudden slumping of his too stiff shoulders, no looking around for support or escape or even a friendly face.

Not there would have been one anyway, his mother and uncle hadn’t attended the trial. The court had been forced to appoint a guardian for him, with one parent dead and the other still attending to her political career several states away and refusing to even acknowledge his existence.

Rey let the video play to its end, and another to take its place.

It was even more obvious in the videos how cold and empty his eyes are were now that she could see him move and breathe. He was unfazed as the legal teams called their witnesses and presented their evidence and wrangled fancy words at a jury that should have been somber but looked instead like they might secretly be enjoying the attention as they held a young man’s life in their hands.

But then, as yet another video played and the clock on her bedside table ticked relentlessly toward 2am and she felt her eyes begin to droop against her will, she saw it.

The prosecution had put up a large photo of Han in the courtroom to play on the sympathy of the jury- to let them see the face of the man who was murdered in a dirty alley by the child he had loved and raised- and Kylo, who had spent most of the trial staring straight ahead and ignoring the proceedings entirely, turned his head to look at the face of his father.

She leaned forward and paused the video, staring at his face in that one brief moment when the mask of indifference slipped. Her heart was pounded as her breath caught painfully in her throat because there was a lost child in his eyes.

It was a look she recognized immediately- pain, anger, fear…and beneath that the kind of desperate shock that only comes from a loss that is too deep and too profound to speak of.

The wood floor creaked beneath her feet as she padded down the stairs, skipping the loudest one by habit and guiding herself only by the light of the moon that streamed in the windows so that she didn’t wake her father.

It took her a few minutes of careful rummaging in the downstairs office to find what she’s looking for, but when she did she said a quick prayer of thanksgiving and ran nimbly back up the stairs to her room, a small photo album now tucked under her arm.

She tossed it onto her bed before she crawled back into it herself and began to skim through it in the low light of her laptop screen. She ran her fingers over old photos of herself, most of them unremarkable with her wide smile and normal family, but those weren’t the ones that she was looking for.

She finally pulled out two, taken several years apart, and held them up next the screen, looking at each of them in turn and then back again to Kylo Ren’s face, still frozen on the screen.

The first, taken when she first arrived with the Johnson’s, showed a small and sickly little girl in a pink dress that hung limply off a body that was so thin that even in pictures her bones poked painfully at her skin. She had been alone and frightened, traumatized from being bounced from foster home to foster home as each deemed her unruly and difficult to discipline.

The second was taken the day of her mother’s funeral. It was a bit blurry, just a quick snapshot that someone had taken of her and her father, both dressed in relentless black and standing helplessly in the sea of flowers that had been sent by everyone from miles around to express their condolences.

In both of them, she had the same broken look in her eyes that Kylo did sitting in that courtroom looking at a picture of his father.

God works in mysterious ways, perhaps he had led her to Kylo because she was the only person in the world who would have seen that look, who would have recognized it for what it was because she’d felt it herself.

She clicked on her beside lamp, creating a little pool of light to push back the darkness, and pulled a sheet of paper and a pen from her desk drawer.

_Kylo,_

_You were right. I was too young to remember it when it happened, but a little bit of time on the internet today was enough to tell me that your trial was quite a spectacle. You got your fifteen minutes of fame out of it, anyway._

_I saw that whole show they did about you on Oprah. That was pretty impressive, and they didn’t sugar coat anything about the crime you committed either, did they? Not that Oprah was the only one, I think they must have splashed all the horrifying details in every newspaper in the country._

_You stabbed your own father, left him lying dead in a pool of his own blood while you ran off because you didn’t feel like going home to your nice house and your pampered life. You were obviously spoiled, out of control, dangerous._

_Is that what you wanted me to say?_

_God doesn’t ask me to judge you for what happened, He only asks that I treat you with kindness and compassion, but I made a judgment anyway. I watched the trial and I know that look in your eyes._

_You’re not a monster._

_Maybe it’s easier for you if you tell yourself that you are, maybe it makes it easier for you to deal with your secrets and whatever really happened that night, but I know what it looks like when someone’s whole world just crumbled beneath their feet._

_You can fool yourself, but you can’t fool me._

_Rey_


	4. I Forgive You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly father will also forgive you- Matthew 6:14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello again! First I just wanted to thank all of you so much for your support and encouragement on this story, we have a long way to go and a lot of stuff to uncover and I am really excited about all of it!
> 
> Second thing is the TW for this chapter. There will be discussion of past child neglect and abandonment, a child going hungry, a teen being abandoned by family, a teen being abused.
> 
> We are seeing the very edges of some of the stuff that lies beneath the surface here, but know that though it is glossed over pretty quickly here, we are going to be diving into the details of it all later.

Kylo had been in a piss poor mood for three days.

Naked fury pulsed in the air around his large frame to such an extent that even Hux had wisely kept his mouth shut and stayed as far on his own side of the cell as possible. The other inmates, largely already intimidated by the sheer size of him and his unpredictably explosive temper, gave him an even wider birth than usual.

Three days.

That’s how long it had been since he’d last received a letter from _her_. The obnoxious woman, no _child,_ that had shown up in his life from out of nowhere- hellbent on causing disruption and acting like she knew one single fucking thing about him.

_You’re not a monster_

The words had played over and over in his mind since he had first read them. The sheer audacity of it was still difficult for him to wrap his mind around.

She’d watched the damn shows, read the damn articles…she knew exactly what he’d done that night in Houston. He’d never denied it.

 _You’re not a monster,_ she’d said.

 _Yes, I am,_ he thought.

Why didn’t she understand it? That it didn’t matter at all what the hell she thought she’d seen or how he’d felt or why it had happened.

It only mattered what he’d done.

They’d made that clear to him in abundance, hadn’t they? His family, his friends, the courts…all of them.

He’d been left to rot in a juvenile detention center for a year because his mother and uncle, the thought of whom still sent fresh coils of rage rioting through his veins, refused to post his bail. He’d turned sixteen in that hellhole, all alone and with no one or nothing to acknowledge him.

It was only the hope he’d clung to that had gotten him through that. Hope helpfully supplied by his lawyers assuring him that there was enough evidence to support a defense- his open admission of what had occurred, the psych evals that resulted in a diagnosis of severe PTSD related to events that occurred before the stabbings, the testimonies from the other teenagers about the living conditions that clearly fell within the definition of mental, emotional, and sexual abuse.

It painted a clear picture and it seemed like it should have been enough…until it wasn’t.

His friends had vanished, taking their support and testimony and eyewitness accounts with them, and though he knew it was largely out of their control or due to sheer terror of the consequences of speaking out, it still hadn’t lessened his feelings of resentment and abandonment. 

In the end, though, then even that hadn’t mattered at all because he’d stood numbly in the cold and empty courtroom during a pretrial hearing and heard the judge decide that all evidence of abuse was inadmissible. The testimonies, the evaluations, even his own recounting of what had happened to him had all been banned- not one word about it was to be uttered during the televised proceedings.

He could still feel it, the weightless sensation of his body and how it had almost felt like he was floating, how the words themselves had sounded like they had traveled a long way under the water to reach his ears, the thick dark metallic taste of fear on his tongue when he realized what it would mean.

It was irrelevant, the judge had said, what events occurred before his father’s murder. It only mattered that he had, in fact, been murdered.

His lawyers had been shocked, almost as unable to understand what was happening as he had been. It wasn’t until years later that he’s discovered that Judge San Tekka had been an old friend of his Uncle Luke and all the pieces clicked into place.

Admitting that evidence at trial would have exposed Luke and his church, their misdeeds, to the world. Obviously, they could never be allowed to happen. Kylo never wondered how far people would go to cover up their sins after that. The answer was always as far as they needed to. 

By the time he figured it all out, it had been too late, his appeals were exhausted, and he’d never gotten a chance to speak, to explain, to lay out his reasons and be judged fairly for his crimes.

Not that he thought it would have mattered anyway. Society had already gotten the story they needed, spread it out all over the TV and the newspapers for everyone else’s entertainment, and he’d been made to understand exactly what he was. They had wanted a monster, and he had become one, the last of the hope inside him dying as the trial progressed.

The verdict had been unsurprising, such a foregone conclusion in his mind that it hadn’t even been able to penetrate the superficial numbness that had clung to him for a few years after his father died. The press had gone crazy over that, his lack of reaction. It was one last thing to demonize him for before they locked him up and threw away the key.

They all knew he was a fucking monster.

How dare she show up now, years after everything else in his life had made the point clear and it all stopped mattering to him all, to try and tell him he wasn’t a monster?

On the third day, simmering with rage and unable to hold his emotions inside any longer, he scribbled another hasty note on a torn scrap of paper, letting his emotions pour out of him into the words and breathing heavily through clenched teeth as he slammed a stamp on the corner of the envelope.

_What the hell do you know about anything, kid? You think I’m a nice person even after everything you know I’ve done? If they didn’t sugar coat anything on those shows you watched, then you know exactly what kind of monster I am, or at least you should. Did your parents keep you so tightly bundled up in your nice little house and your nice little church that no one ever bothered to teach you stories about the boogey man?_

_That’s a serious flaw in your education, princess, so let me do you a favor and fill in the gaps. The devil you should be worried about isn’t the kind that lives in your Bible and thinks that saying ‘fuck’ is a sin. The devil you should be worried about lives next door to your house and thinks about peeling the skin from your bones. He’s the friendly guy at the grocery store that pays to watch strangers fuck little kids on the internet, or the nice lady at church who goes home and beats her own children…but just in the places where their clothes cover their bruises._

_Hell is empty, sweetheart, all the devils are here._

***

Hux smirked when he turned around, a new crisp white envelope clutched in his hand.

“Fuck off,” Kylo snapped, but there was little heat to it.

It had been longer this time, long enough that he really though that maybe his last letter had been enough to get through to her, that she’d moved on. He'd wanted to be satisfied that his vicious words had done the trick, but each day without a response had twisted something inside him uncomfortably.

He tore the top off the envelope and quickly scanned the letter inside, noting in surprise that there appeared to be a few spots near the bottom where the rich black ink had blurred and the paper looked a bit thinner, more fragile.

Tear spots.

Fuck.

He hadn’t meant to make her cry.

_Kylo,_

_Mark Twain quotes, huh? I’m impressed._

_You’re not a monster, or a devil, but that last letter was just…not nice. I’ve been nice to you, and I honestly think you owe me an apology for being so mean all the time, but I forgive you._

_I forgive you because it’s what I’m supposed to do- as a Christian it’s what God commands me to do- but more than that, I forgive you because I think you’re a man who has a lot of hurt in his heart. Have you seen those devils Kylo? The kind that you told me about in your letter?_

_I think you have, and I think they hurt you._

_You asked me what I knew about anything, and I guess that’s fair. No one expects someone like me to know about hurt or how it can dig around inside you and scoop out everything else until there’s nothing left but the numbness and the anger that keep you safe because it means no one can get close enough to hurt you._

_No one expects me to know it, but I do._

_The first time I learned about it was the day my birth parents left me alone in a run-down motel room and never came back. I was three, and they left me behind like garbage they didn’t want anymore. The state suspects they were probably junkies, but no one knows for sure._

_I learned it again in every foster home they put me in for the next three years. They bounced me around from place to place because no one wanted to deal with my issues. I guess my parents hadn’t fed me very well because I was always stealing food, no matter how much the new families gave me. I got into a lot of fights with the other kids, had a lot of anger. I bit people a lot- my adopted dad still has a scar on his arm that I gave him the first week they took me in._

_Is it foolish that I thought that was it when my last foster family adopted me? That pain would never be able to find me again because I had a family of my own? People tell me it wasn't, but it feels like it was because I learned it again a few years ago when my mom died._

_That one probably hurt the worst because she wasn’t like me. She wasn’t abandoned or broken or unworthy of being loved like I was. She was good, and kind, and she took me in when I was so wild and angry that I was practically feral, and she gave me love anyway, even when I didn’t deserve it._

_She didn’t deserve to die, but she did, and I couldn’t stop it and it hurt._

_I don’t know why I am telling you this, I probably shouldn’t, but I said we could be friends and I guess I think friends might talk about these things, the kind of secrets that weigh on their hearts and leave scars._

_I have other friends, but I don’t talk to them about stuff like this. They don’t understand what it’s like to hurt this deep and they look at me with pity. I don’t know why, but I don’t think you would pity me. I think that you’d understand, that maybe even though things look ok on the surface, doesn’t mean that things are ok on the inside._

_For some reason I think you're like me, and don’t have many friends. I hate the thought of anyone feeling like they’re alone._

_I know what it feels like to be alone and, Kylo…you’re not alone._

_Rey_

_***_

Her heart beat a little faster in her chest when she pulled the letter from the mailbox, and she bit her bottom lip as nervous butterflies flooded her stomach.

She had no clue what she’s been thinking, sending him that last letter. She’d poured her heart out to him, an angry and resentful stranger, on impulse and with nothing but a stray hope that maybe there could be some connection there and the theory that God had brought them together for a reason.

Now the results of that decision were in her hands.

If he was still angry at her, still not interested, then she would have no choice but to ask the warden for a different name.

“Hey,” her dad called loudly from the kitchen, “don’t let the screen door…slam.” He sighed good naturedly when the door reverberated against its hinges behind her, as he done at least once a day since she’d moved into this house.

She’d always been just a little bit careless, but he never really seemed to mind.

“Anything good in the mail today?” He was standing at the stove, sleeves of his white dress shirt rolled up as he made dinner. There was a little salt in his paper dark hair, and a few wrinkles around his eyes when he smiled, but he was still a handsome man. Rey attributed most of it to the kind twinkle in his blue eyes- everyone loved her dad.

“Hmm? Oh, no…I mean, yes, there was…but it was just a letter from that pen pal program I started for the Bible group.”

He brought a spoon of spaghetti sauce to her lips for to sample and she nodded. The flavor was good, better than anything she could have made. Everyone knew that snacks were about the most you expect from her in the kitchen.

“Is it going well? The program? I’ve heard so many good things about what’s happening in the Bible group since you took over.”

She slipped the letter into the pocket of her jeans, hoping he wouldn’t ask her about her own experiences specifically. “I think so, everyone’s pretty satisfied with it so far and most of the inmates were very enthusiastic about the idea.”

“That’s good, honey,” he said distractedly. “Why don’t you grab us a few plates? I think this is just about ready.”

She sighed in relief, pressed a kiss to his cheek, and set the table for dinner.

As they ate they chatted happily about her upcoming plans for the Bible group, now that the 4th of July picnic had come and gone, and his upcoming sermon for the week. She suggested the topic of forgiveness, and he readily agreed, just as he had when she had suggested the topic of prejudices after Rose’s incident with Mrs. Nu- Rey had stared her down in church that Sunday and she had been better behaved since.

Her relationship with her father was now comfortable and easy, and she knew how lucky she was to be so loved and unconditionally supported, even with a scar that would always linger on his arm and a permanent ache around her heart when she looked at her mother’s empty chair.

Maybe she had been wrong in her letter, maybe she shouldn’t have dwelled on the echoes of old pains instead of focusing on her blessings.

Kylo was just going to tell her how spoiled and ungrateful she sounded. How spoiled and ungrateful she _was_ … complaining about _her_ life to a man that would spend the rest of _his_ life behind bars.

The guilt she felt was sudden, a sticky and unwelcome emotion that she could have easily done without.

As a result, she left the letter sitting unopened on her desk until morning, when her curiosity finally overrode her anxiety and she had to see his response even if it _was_ a blistering lecture on her own privilege.

She could apologize if he was angry, and try again, she decided- quickly and conveniently forgetting her plan to leave him alone if he was still reluctant to write her.

She didn’t know why his opinion mattered so much to her, so only knew that it did.

Grateful tears ran unchecked down her cheeks as she pulled his letter out and began to read.

_Rey,_

_If I’m not alone, then neither are you…_


	5. Something That Makes You Smile

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Those who sow in tears, shall reap in joy- Psalms 126:5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My readers on this fic get a bonus chapter this week, because I got my confidence a bit shaken up on one of my others and I needed a break from that story. Hope you enjoy this one, we are getting a bit heavy in the hints about Kylo's background so once again- please mind the tags!
> 
> TW/CW- abuse of teens, teen alcohol and drug use, implied teen prostitution/human trafficking, very dubious sexual consent with a teen runaway, violence and murder, hints of Damerey (Rey has a crush)

_If I’m not alone neither are you…_

It’s not that he regrets telling her that, not exactly. It’s not even that he regrets what he said after that-

_Maybe you were right, maybe I do know what it’s like to feel that kind of pain. There was a lot of stuff that happened, stuff that weren't allowed to talk about at the trial._ _I was so angry, so hurt and broken._

_I killed my father._

_I just don’t think I’m ready to talk about it. I might never be ready to talk about it._

_Talk to me about something else, Rey. Talk about something that makes you smile._

_I didn’t mean to make you cry._

-though he probably should regret it because he just _knows_ that she’s going to write back and tell him that it’s alright, that he can tell her about it if and when he’s ready. She’s just like that- calm and understanding and immovable when she’s set her mind to something. He can already tell that about her.

No, the part that he regrets is that talking to her means thinking about things.

Lots of things.

Especially now that his irritation with her had begun to fade into curiosity, maybe even a grudging sense of connection. It was impossible not to wonder what she looked like? How she spent her time? If she enjoyed school? If she had friends?

He reached into the envelope where he had stored her letters, rereading the first for the hundredth time, careful not to bend or wrinkle the pages too much. The girl, Rose, from the bible study group, she was probably a friend.

That was nice for Rey, that she had people who cared about her, even if there were some things that she chose not to share with them…things that she had only shared with him.

That was nice for him, to know something intimate about someone, to be trusted. She’d already shared so much, while he had shared so little. At least, nothing that the whole world didn’t already think they knew, anyway. He hadn’t had a connection to anyone in such a long time that he’d almost forgotten what it felt like to be curious about someone else and to have them be curious about him in return.

His eyes drifted to Hux- the redhead was lounging in his bunk and reading some book that was probably dumb as all fuck- and tried to imagine what would have happened if he had even bothered to ask what it was about. Hux would have told him to piss off and that would have been the end of that.

He'd gotten used to it, that feeling of isolation and relying on one but himself.

Now, suddenly, it bothered him.

Maybe it wouldn’t hurt, to tell her something about himself, to try and connect with another person. She was safe on the outside, away from him and anything that could happen, any way that he could hurt her or let her down. He went to sleep wondering what he might tell her when she wrote him back this time. Because he was sure that she would- he was almost looking forward to it.

That night he had the dream again.

It was the first time in a long time, and it hurt even more than he remembered.

It was dark and he was lost. He was running as fast as he could because he knew something was chasing him, though he couldn’t remember what. He stumbled, unable to see where he was going, and suddenly there was a sea of faces rushing by, all of them familiar but moving too fast for him to focus on any one in particular.

Then the faces faded away and he saw his Uncle Luke, face calm and his eyes devoid of sympathy, as he stood in the darkness of a large church and delivered a sermon on the evils of sin. Familiar fury surged in Kylo’s mind, and he balled his fists so tight his hands ached as he took a violent swing at his uncle, but his hand passed through like Luke's dream face was made of smoke... and Luke smiled, triumphant at his nephew’s failure.

Kylo turned- disgusted with himself as Luke continued to drone on unfazed-and spotted Mitaka and Bazine. His heart lurched in his chest, seeing Mitaka's frightened eyes and Bazine's beautiful face. She'd always been beautiful, and not even Luke had been able to take that from her. 

They were huddled together on a wet concrete floor, heads so close that Kylo couldn't tell where Mitaka's brown hair ended and Bazine's began. They were cold and frightened and Mitaka was crying but Kylo knew he couldn’t help them. Mitaka was always crying, he had it the worst out of almost anyone- _except for Taylor and where the hell was she and why wasn't she here and what the fuck had Luke done to her this time?_ -and anything they ever did to try and help him only made it worse.

Kylo clenched and unclenched his fists at his sides, hating himelf for the impotence of his rage almost as much as he hated Luke.

Luke’s sermon was interrupted by the sound of a baby crying and nausea swam in Kylo’s stomach when Bazine looked up at him with tears of loss and rage in her eyes. “I hate you,” she spat, and he sank to his knees in front of her, but she walked away, and she didn’t look back. He knew he’d never see her again, that she would never forgive him for what had happened.

He turned away from them, leaving Mitaka sobbing alone on the floor, and ran as fast as he could.

“Come, child, you need a place to be safe…a place to belong.” Kylo sagged in relief at the sound of Snoke’s voice.

There was laughter in a rundown house filled with runaways, and the acrid smell of tobacco and weed smoke in the air. His friends were just as fucked up as he was, and they were all having a good time. Snoke called them the Knights of Ren, but Kylo knew they were a bunch of petty, underage criminals.

That should probably bother him, but the drugs made him feel better, and so did the alcohol.

“I know you want to stay here,” Snoke whispered in ear. “There’s just the small matter of how you earn your place.”

“I’ve given everything I have to you already,” Kylo insisted. “I’ve done everything you’ve asked.”

“Of course, you have. You've been very loyal, Kylo, very grateful. This shouldn’t be a problem, then. You're not a child, are you?”

His stomach flipped when the dream tipped him into a fancy hotel bed with silk sheets, and cold dread settled over him. He wanted to run but he knew he couldn’t, he had nowhere to go.

An older blonde woman was in bed next to him and his heart was pounding in his chest. “Don’t worry,” she said softly, placing her hand low on his stomach, “I didn’t pay Snoke that much to hurt you. Just relax.” He felt like he was going to vomit, but there was nothing he can do to stop it now. He closed his eyes and pretended he was somewhere else until it was over. The first time was the worst.

The drugs made him feel better, and so did the alcohol, but he wasn’t sure anymore that it was enough.

“I’m not going back,” he announced defiantly, trapped in a dark alley with the man who used to be his father. He doesn’t have a father, not anymore. “You can’t make me go back to Luke’s.”

Han shook his head. "I promise, we won't make you go back to Luke's", he'd said, but Kylo couldn’t tell if he was lying. “We love you, Ben. Come home,” Han begged, taking a step forward and forcing Kylo to walk backwards until his back was against the wall behind him.

“I can’t. It’s too late.” He knew what his mother would say, if she found about the drugs and the drinking, about Luke and Bazine, about the Knights and Snoke. She'd never forgive him for what he’d done, what he had allowed others to do to him.

“It’s not too late. Snoke is just using you.”

Kylo knew that, he did, but it didn’t matter. At least Snoke knew what he was, how fucked up he was on the inside. His family couldn’t know that, not _ever_.

Han took another step forward, his hand gripping Kylo’s shoulder tightly- he snapped, pure terror rioting through his veins at the thought of Han trying to make him go back, of his mother’s face full of condemnation when she found out everything that had happened.

He didn’t remember doing it, didn’t even know how the knife ended up in his hands, but suddenly Han was lying on the ground beneath him and his father’s blood was hot and sticky on his fingers.

“Dad?” Kylo shook him, dropping the knife and burying both hands in the warmth of Han’s shirt as he did so. “Dad!”

The scream was the last thing he heard in the dream, it always was, right before he bolted upright in his bunk with sweat pouring off him and a real scream stuck painfully in his throat, but he knew in real life that he had stayed there, holding his father’s body and staring into his lifeless eyes until the cops found him a few hours later.

He thought he was probably still screaming when they got there.

Twelve years later, curled up on a bunk in the prison cell that he would never leave, he could still feel the rawness of his throat and the tears on his cheeks when they’d slapped him in cold, biting, metal handcuffs and dragged him away from his father’s body.

Maybe he’d been a little insane then.

Maybe he was a little insane now, to be thinking that someone like Rey would still want to talk to him if he told her about all that shit. He’d killed to that shit keep hidden away, because of the guilt and shame and fear that it had laid on his heart and soul.

The stuff she’d lived through…it was stuff that happened to her, through no fault of her own, because life and fate were bastards to everyone.

The stuff he’d been through, though, that was his fault.

His and Luke’s and Snoke’s.

No, he couldn’t tell her about all of that. She didn’t deserve to have to be drug into that world, not even through his memories.

He wasn’t surprised by the content of the next letter he received several days later, but it reassured him that he’d made the right choice. His desire for connection wasn't as important as protecting her. She was bright and happy and optimistic, and he’d be damned if that was ruined because of him, not after everything she’d already been through and come out shining on the other side.

_Kylo,_

_I know you killed him, and I understand that you aren’t ready to let me in and share what happened. I’ll be here if you do ever want to talk about it. Ok?_

_You didn’t really make me cry, I just miss my mom sometimes, but if you really want to know what makes me smile?_

_Let’s see…_

_Food, always and any kind. I can’t cook but I love to eat, especially sweets. Peach cobblers and cherry pies will get a smile from me on even my worst days!_

_Music! I love music, but my favorite is contemporary Christian and I don’t think you’d enjoy that? I also like poetry._

_I’m starting college this fall, that makes me smile a lot these days. It's kind of like a whole new beginning and it’s the same one as most of my friends (including Rose, the one I told you about from Bible group?), which makes it incredibly exciting even though I’m still not exactly sure what I want to major in. My dad thinks I’d be a good teacher, and I like kids, so maybe early childhood education…We’ll see, I guess._

_Getting letters from you…Is that weird? I know you weren’t exactly thrilled about it at first, but I know God sent you my way for a reason and I’m always happy to find a letter from you in the mailbox._

That bit made his stomach flutter. It settled over him, something he hadn’t realized he’d been missing- a sense of purpose, a reason to exist. Amazing how something so profound could be reduced to such a simple goal...to make Rey smile.

He kept reading.

_I 've wanted to ask, and I know that it may be part of what you don’t want to talk about so you don't have to answer, but why doesn’t anyone else write to you?_

_Rey_

He sighed and tipped his head back against the pillow, debating how honest he should be when he answered her last question.

***

Rey walked slowly back to the house, open letter already in her hand as she went. Late afternoon sunlight dappled across the words and she smiled as she read.

_OK, first of all, any food? What about liver? Haggis? My mother made me eat escargot as a kid, I was not a fan._

A laugh bubbled up inside her. She couldn't wait to tell him how disgusting that was. Someone obviously needed to feed him some real food. Except they couldn’t, she remembered with an unpleasant sinking sensation in her stomach, because he was never getting out of prison.

Did they let visitors bring food to prisoners?

Hmm.

_Second, no contemporary Christian is not my favorite. I like most music, but not that. Or opera. Did your parents let you listen to normal music?_

_Third, who is your favorite poet? Poem?_

_Congrats, on college! It never really seemed that exciting to me, but it's better than being in here, right? I think you’d be a great teacher. You seem like the kind of person to dig until you find the best of someone and not let them give you anything less. Kids need that, someone to have faith in them._

Had he needed that, she wondered, as she opened the front door and let the screen slam behind her. Why had no one helped him?

She nibbled on the jagged edge of a broken thumbnail, leaning on the inside of the doorjamb and frowning as she read the rest.

_Maybe I wasn’t the nicest person when you started writing me, and I’m sorry. You aren’t what I thought you’d be, and you don’t make me feel like I’m not human because of the mistakes I’ve made. Thanks for that._

_And about your last question…my mother didn’t even come to the trial and my uncle died a few years ago. So even if he wanted to, which he didn’t, now he can’t and she won’t._

_It’s ok, though, I’d rather have you._

“What are you smiling about?”

She looked up in surprise, clutching the letter to her chest and meeting the kind and familiar face of Poe Dameron.

At 30, he was quite a few years older than she was, but still incredibly handsome. Brown curls surrounded a perfectly sculpted face- high cheekbones, firm jaw, sensual lips over even white teeth. She’d had a bit of crush on Poe for as long as she could remember- he'd been part of her father's congregation for years- and he’d taken it well, never making her feel small or childish. He was always polite even with the ever-present twinkle of mischief in his brown eyes.

He was always teasing her, about one thing or another.

“Hey, Poe,” she said. “Are you here to talk to Dad?”

“Yeah, he said I could swing by tonight…have dinner. He's in his office, just asked me to come out and grab us a couple of glasses of tea.”

She nodded politely, pointedly ignoring his initial question. His eyes were still on the letter, but she didn’t appease his curiosity, turning instead to back slowly toward the stairs, only finally turning her back on him when she set her foot on the first step, too far out of his reach for him to try and take it from her. He watched her go with an amused smirk and she knew that she had just set herself up for an endless stream of him picking on her about her secret.

“There's plenty of tea in the fridge and you know where everything is in the kitchen. Please excuse me, I need to run upstairs and clean up before we eat.”

“Sure,” he shrugged. “See you in a bit.”

It wasn’t a complete lie, she _was_ going to clean up for dinner…as soon as she wrote another quick letter.

_Kylo,_

_Liver is disgusting. You should be ashamed for suggesting that it qualifies as a food…_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rey's favorite poem is Invictus by William Ernest Henly
> 
> Invictus-
> 
> Out of the night that covers me,  
> Black as the Pit from pole to pole,  
> I thank whatever gods may be  
> For my unconquerable soul.
> 
> In the fell clutch of circumstance  
> I have not winced nor cried aloud.  
> Under the bludgeonings of chance  
> My head is bloody but unbowed.
> 
> Beyond this place of wrath and tears  
> Looms but the Horror of the shade.  
> And yet the final menace of the years  
> Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.
> 
> It matters not how straight the gate,  
> How charged with punishments the scroll.  
> I am the master of my fate:  
> I am the captain of my soul.


	6. Can You Miss Something You Never Had?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A sweet friendship refreshes the soul- Proverbs 27:9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has had me struggling for days. It was hard to pin down the right plot threads and the overall mood and characterization that I needed for later. Please be gentle on this one, I tried so hard.

“I can’t believe summer is almost over already.”

Rey hummed noncommittally at Kaydel’s comment, eyes pressed shut against the harsh glint of the afternoon sun. Sweat was already beading on her skin and she had just laid down on her towel after climbing out of the water. The skin of her fingers was still wrinkled, and she was already thinking about jumping back in just to escape the heat.

It doesn’t feel over,” Finn complained, leaning back against Rose’s legs as she sat behind him, occasionally feeding him bits of ice cream off the cone she had stolen from her sister’s freezer when Paige wasn’t looking.

“I’m just glad Paige’s apartment complex lets her have visitors at the pool,” Jannah said, stretching out on the lounge chair next to Rey’s. “I’m only back for two weeks and I already feel like I’m melting.”

Finn threw a towel at his sister and she squealed when the dripping wet fabric hit her face.

“That’s what you get,” he told her, “for going to college out of state where it gets cold.”

Jannah, who had left with her full scholarship to a university in Colorado and never looked back, shrugged. “That’s why I stayed with my roommates in our apartment, instead of coming back for the whole summer. I do _not_ miss this weather.”

“We _are_ pretty lucky that Paige got married this spring and moved into her own place. This is much better than the public pool.” Rose’s tone was wistful, and Rey knew she was trying to pretend that she didn’t miss having Paige in the house all the time. They had fought constantly before she moved out, but Rey knew there was nobody in the world that Rose loved more than her sister.

Rey peaked an eye open to check on her, but Finn had noticed, too, and he was subtly rubbing his cheek against Rose’s still wet knee and Rose was already smiling again.

They were an adorable couple, and it always sent a little frisson of jealousy through Rey to see them curled around each other so affectionately. She didn’t begrudge them their easy intimacy, but she did wish that just once someone might look at her with interest.

Nobody in this small town wanted to date the pastor’s daughter. It seemed like everyone knew how she was serious about her faith, and about the virginity pact she’d signed during her freshman year of high school.

Not that she really wanted to date any of _them_ , either. Poe was the only person she’d ever really had a crush on, and he certainly wasn’t interested in her _like that._

Jannah shook her head at them when Finn rested his head on Rose's lap. “How could you date my brother, Rose? He’s so annoying.”

“Not to _me,”_ Rose giggled, leaning down and pressing a kiss to Finn’s cheek. He smirked triumphantly at his sister and Jannah pretend to throw up into her hand.

“So gross,” she insisted.

“Yeah? What about you?” Finn leaned forward, challenge so strong on every line of his face that Rey was once again glad she didn’t have siblings. “Have you found anyone willing to date your ugly face?”

Jannah shrugged nonchalantly. “Who has time for dating? I’m having too much fun exploring all my options…and letting them explore me.” She laughed at the disgusted look on Finn’s face, and the sound of it was rich and joyful and free. It was contagious and made Rey smile even as she turned her head away to hide her own pink cheeks.

She tried not to judge them for their choices about sex, just as she knew they would never pressure her to go against her own determination to wait until marriage, but she was still embarrassed when they talked about it so openly.

Her knowledge on the subject was restricted to the little she'd learned in the school’s sexual education classes, which came down to nothing more than instilling fear of disease and pregnancy while insisting on abstinence.

She rarely had a clue what her friends were talking about, but she was too embarrassed to admit it.

“I bet that’s a lot easier to do now that you’ve left this place behind,” Kaydel mused bitterly. “There’s not a lot of room for exploration here.”

“I’m sorry, Kay.” Rey reached out, wrapping her fingers around Kaydel’s and giving them a small squeeze. It always hurt her to hear the pain in her friend’s voice whenever the subject of dating came up.

“Don’t be. It’s not your fault. Your Dad’s never made me feel bad with any of his sermons, not like the church my parents go to.”

“It’s awful that they think God’s word is a way to hurt and condemn anyone different. Are your parents still mad that you go to church with me now, instead of with them?”

“Kinda, I guess. It’s not exactly a secret that your church is the most liberal one in town. They don’t agree with a lot of the stuff your dad says.” She looked uncomfortable at the admission, but Rey only smiled reassuringly. She knew that plenty of the older people in town were not pleased that her father chose to focus more on God’s love and forgiveness than his wrath.

Kaydel’s parents were definitely among them and Rey had never understood how two people with such a cold lack of empathy had managed to produce such a kind and loving daughter.

“We still have plenty of people like Mrs. Nu, though, don’t we?” Rose asked. “That woman uses her faith as a weapon on everyone around her. She’s been a total _bitch_ to me- sorry, Rey- and I know she’d make your life hell- and probably out you to your parents- if she got the chance.”

Kaydel winced at the thought. “They’d kick me out, you know? That’s why I don’t date.”

“You could live with me,” Rey told her, not for the first time. “My dad wouldn’t let you live on the streets. He’s not like that, you know he isn’t.”

Kaydel smiled but shook her head. “I wouldn’t do that. I don’t want everyone in town gossiping about me or being mean to your family because of it. And,” she said, cutting across Rey's objection, "I'm just not ready to face my parents."

“We understand, but it’s not fair that you have to hide who you are,” Jannah assured her, wrapping her arm around Kaydel’s slender shoulders before turning her gaze to Rose. “Mrs. Nu is seriously still giving you a hard time? I hate that racist old raisin.”

Rose nodded, giggling at Jannah’s unabashed distain. “Pastor Johnson’s tried to deal with her, but she’s so sneaky that it makes it hard for us to prove anything. He’s given a few pointed sermons and that straightens her out for a while, but never for very long.”

Rey sighed. “It’s way past time for her to find some joy in her heart, or at least stay home and not spread her misery. Imagine spending so much time at church and leaving with nothing but bitterness and hate.”

“There’s far too much hate in the world already,” Rose agreed.

“More than I realized,” Rey admitted. “I feel so stupid because thought that people like Mrs. Nu were really horrible, and she _is_ , but…but some of the stuff Kylo’s told me about being in prison…” She shuddered.

“My cousin said things were bad,” Rose agreed.

“He says they have literal Nazis in there. People get beaten, stabbed, and even raped- all because of their color or their sexuality." Rey sighed, trying to put words to some undefined stirring that had taken root inside her. "I really thought that I was making a difference in the world- with the Bible group, or having my Dad lecture Mrs. Nu while I made mean judgmental faces at her during the sermon, or offering to let Kaydel sleep in my guest room if her parents kicked her out...that stuff seemed like it mattered. It was like I was doing some good to undo the injustices of the world, but now...what if that stuff isn't enough? Those people in prison don’t even _try_ to hide their hate.”

“That’s just prison,” Jannah told her confidently. “The stuff you do is helping with this small town's bullshit, and there's nothing you can do about life in prison.”

“Yeah, prison has the worst of humanity," Finn agreed. "I guess that’s fair, though, it's meant to be some kind of punishment, right?”

He frowned at Rose when she smacked him lightly on the arm. “My cousin got arrested for stealing a car, being locked up with Nazis and being threatened with rape is hardly a fair punishment,” she huffed.

“Well, yeah, everyone knows that the system is racist and that it isn’t always fair but…" He let the sentence linger, seemingly unable to figure out what to say that wouldn't further upset Rose. "Besides it’s not like that’s the case with Kylo. Rey said he was a murderer, remember? I’m sure there are plenty of rapists and killers in his part of the prison. You don’t think they should be punished?”

‘He was a kid,” Rey said, cutting in before Rose could answer. “Like a literal kid. I’ve seen the trial footage.”

“He _killed his dad_ ,” Finn said, shaking his head a little in bewilderment. “Does it really matter when or why he killed him?”

Rey shrugged dismissively. She already regretted ever telling them anything about Kylo or what he had done. Every conversation about him somehow circled back around to that, and it was frustrating.

“You two have been writing a lot, haven’t you?” Rose asked quietly.

“Yeah? He’s lonely, writing him was kinda the point...and your idea.”

“Sure, we wanted to help some people out, make their sentences a little less miserable. It’s just…we all got car thieves or people locked up on petty drug charges and you got a murderer who is never getting out of prison.”

“Yeah,” Kaydel agreed. “Dan got picked up for possession charges, so he’ll be out soon. They might even parole him and move him to a halfway house before his sentence is even over.”

Rey stared at her. “So?”

“I just don’t want you to get to be too close of friends with this guy,” Rose explained. “He seems dangerous.”

“You said yourself, he’s never getting out. He can’t hurt me. All he does is draw me pictures and talk to me about poetry and music.”

Rose fell silent with a small shrug, and a stern look from Rey kept the rest of them from speaking up again, either. The conversation turned to other topics as Rey leaned back in her chair and pretended to nap.

It irritated her, how quickly they’d dismissed him once they had found out why he was in prison. She’d tried to explain to Rose about her connection to him and her theory that God had brought them together, but Rose had not understood- and her cautioning had quickly gotten under Rey’s skin.

Every conversation over the past few weeks had somehow evolved to being about him, all of them ending up much as this one had. She knew they loved her, but Rose was being far too overprotective. Kylo didn't deserve that.

Rey let mind drift as she listened half heartedly to her friends as they talked about the last few fleeting days of summer and their excitement over college classes and newly found freedoms.

It left her feeling strangely hollow and sad inside that Kylo had missed out on all of that over the years, the good and the bad.

***

“Jesus Christ,” Hux snapped irritably, “You’d think keeping us in decent air conditioning would be considered a basic fucking human need in this heat.”

His red hair was damp and dark wet spots down his spine and beneath his armpits gave silent witness to the truth of his discomfort.

Kylo grunted, too hot and miserable to do more than that. The heat was intolerable in mid August, leaving them all feeling like they were crammed into this hell like sardines in a tin can that someone had ridiculously stuffed into their oven.

The whole place smelled like stale sweat and aggression.

His fingers left damp imprints in the paper as he read Rey’s most recent letter.

_Kylo,_

_Thank you so much for the drawing you sent with your last letter. I can’t believe you remembered my favorite colors and that daises are my favorite flower! That was so sweet of you!_ _I have a little wall full of your art now (I’m a bit ashamed to admit that I’ve framed every single one of them because they’re so beautiful) but I think that one is my favorite so far._

_I didn’t realize I had so many of your drawings. We have already written quite a few letters, haven’t we? It’s almost time for my first semester of college classes to start and I can’t seem to figure out where summer has gone this year._

_It’s a bit disappointing if I’m being honest._

_The first year after you finish high school, when you get to be an adult and there’s all this freedom, that’s supposed to be something magical, right?_

_I didn’t feel any of that, it was just more days hiding inside for the air conditioning and hanging out at the pool with the same friends I’ve always had. It was identical to every other summer, though we hung out at the apartments where Rose’s sister lives now and used her pool instead of the public one._

_No magical summer adventure for me._

_I really am excited about college, but overall, I wish it felt it more special. It seems like there’s something missing and I can’t figure out what it is._

He frowned. There were two lines of text that she had scribbled through with a heavy hand, blackening them out so that they were unreadable. What had she thought might be missing and why had she changed her mind about telling him?

_Maybe it’s because I’m not really set on a specific major? I don’t know for sure and I just feel so restless._

_I feel like I always end up rambling to you about something unhappy and I’m really sorry about that. I hate writing to you about this stuff, especially knowing that you didn’t get to have any of this for yourself._

_You’d probably give anything to have the mundane things I take for granted and it makes me feel awful. It’s so easy to talk to you and I forget that it makes me seem like an ungrateful brat when I whine to you about my life._

_I worry about you being in there and something bad happening to you. I know you told me that you're used to it, but the stuff you told me sounds very frightening. I wish you could be here to whine about normal stuff with me and out of that horrible place. I think we'd be good friends, don't you?_

_Can you miss something you never had?_

_Rey_

Hmmm...

If things had been different, if his parents hadn’t sent him to Luke’s or he hadn’t ended up running the streets for Snoke, maybe they could have been normal friends hanging out by the pool together. They might have met some other way in that hypothetical life, and he could have been there for her, listened to her problems, maybe even helped her to solve them.

Maybe in that life, he would have changed his mind and even decided to go to college himself. She would have had no reason to be ashamed to talk to him if he had. Well, she'd never actually said she was ashamed and she’d never told him exactly what had been said, but he knew her friend Rose had discouraged her from writing to him too often or sharing too much.

Rose was just looking out for her, he knew. Hell, she had many of the the same concerns that he’d had when Rey had first written to him, but hearing it now from someone else... it hurt, and it made him nervous. He just didn’t like the idea of someone trying to take Rey away from him, not when life had already taken everything else he cared about.

His mind slipped away, drifting back to his first days in juvie after he’d been arrested and how terrified he’d been when he realized that the inside of a prison might be all he ever knew.

He looked around, taking in the small cell where Hux was still ceaselessly bitching about the heat, the putrid smell, and the general feeling of hopelessness. He’d been right, all those years ago, this was all his life would never amount to. He never wanted Rey to know how much that hurt him, or how afraid he'd become to lose something as simple as her letters. 

_Rey,_

_You should know by now that I like it when you tell me about your life. Even the boring stuff is a welcome distraction from what happens in here. Don't feel guilty about being unhappy, nobody is happy all the time and I bet once you figure out what your major should be, you’ll feel much better._

_Do most people have magical summers?_

_I didn’t get to have a senior year, but I think that’s some made up TV bullshit. I bet your friends think their summer was pretty typical, too, since they were all just hanging out at the pool with you. Most of us in here would love to hang out by the pool all summer, our air conditioning is pretty unreliable and it makes Hux cranky, so maybe that's enough and it doesn't need to be anything really special._

_If life has magical moments, I doubt they come on a schedule and it just happens when it’s the right time._ _There’s no fucking TV show or movie on Earth that would have predicted that this summer would be a magical one for me, but it’s the summer I found you and that felt kinda special._

_Your letters have become a bright spot in my shitty life, and I think you're my friend already, even if I am stuck in here._ _Don’t waste any of your time worrying about me or being sad about me being stuck in here, ok? Promise? It's not so bad in here, not anymore._

_You can miss things you never had, but you shouldn’t waste your life wishing for them._

_Kylo_

He stared at his last sentence and wondered if he would be able to take his own advice. There was always a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach when he thought for too long about whether she would keep writing to him once her classes started. What if she got too busy?

He’d gotten used to having someone to care about over the past several weeks and the thought of loosing her now made his heart ache.


	7. Did You Know?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Learn to do good; Seek justice,  
> Rebuke the oppressor and defend the fatherless,  
> Plead for the widow - Isaiah 1:17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just wanted so say thank you again to everyone that has commented and shown love for this fic. I really love seeing your reactions and predictions to everything that is happening! Watching you all fall in love with this particular version of the characters and their journey is amazing!

_Fall 2015_

The stack of letters from her was thick now and new ones arrived on a mostly predictable schedule that gave rhythm and reason to his days.

The prison itself had not changed- the sights and sounds and smells of incarceration were as unpleasant and endless as they had always been- but the sheer monotony had been broken by the words that spilled from her mind to dance across the paper in expensive black ink. She wrote to him at least twice a week, usually not even waiting to receive a response to one before composing the next.

She had gushed happily about her first weeks at college, and he had smiled at her boundless enthusiasm for new experiences. He knew she must be smart because she found the work stimulating and enjoyable. She wasn’t like him, he loved to learn but always hated sitting in a classroom, and he was glad that she was nothing like him.

She was all of the bright and happy things, bringing the world joy where he had only ever brought pain.

Prison offered him pitifully few interesting things to discuss, so he answered her questions if she asked directly, but never volunteered more than necessary about his barren existence. He preferred to talk to her about her life, which was rich and vibrant and full.

To compensate, he continued to draw for her. Always cheerful things like flowers and sunsets and interesting faces that he remembered from before he came to this place. Infusing her world with beauty, meant he brought a bit of it into his own mind, which was a welcome reprieve while it lasted.

Sometimes he wrote her poetry, the lines written in neat calligraphy that added a physical beauty to the flow of the words. She liked it when he copied the works of famous poets, but she liked it more when he wrote his own.

There were no sweet and honeyed words in his verse, even here his soul bled ugly stains that dripped pain into every metered line, but she never complained that he was too bleak, too dark, too broken. He felt guilty for the bits of ugliness that worked its way across the bond they forming between them, but she didn't seem to mind and wondered if the words ever spoke to her own sadness, and the parts of her that she had buried away under her gratitude and her perpetual optimism. 

Her positivity was contagious and Hux had given up on mocking him for his ‘little girl pen pal’ when he realized how much Kylo’s attitude had improved with the regular arrival of Rey’s letters. The absence of erratic flares of his cellmate’s temper had turned the surly ginger into her biggest fan.

“Mail from your girl,” he said now, handing it over and snorting out a laugh when Kylo extended his middle finger flippantly.

“You know it isn’t like that. I’m stuck in here for the rest of my life, remember? Not everyone is lucky enough to have an actual release date like you.” The words were without their previously usual heat, so Hux just shrugged absently.

“Some women are into that. Intimacy issues or some shit, right? Or maybe they just can’t get a man on the outside.”

“Watch your mouth,” Kylo warned. “You don’t know a damn thing about her.”

“Neither do you, really. Do you even know what she looks like?” Hux’s look was unmistakably condescending, and he already knew the answer.

“No, I don’t,” Kylo admitted, not really looking at Hux anymore, his gaze fixed absently in a spot of peeling paint beside his cellmate’s head, “but I know she’s smart and funny. She doesn’t have a boyfriend, but she just started college so I’m sure she’ll have one soon.”

If anyone deserved to be loved, he was sure that it was Rey and she woudn't have any problems finding someone. Who wouldn’t be drawn to that vibrant energy?

“Do you think he’ll try and stop her from talking to you if she does?”

“What?” Kylo’s gaze snapped back into focus on Hux’s face.

“Well, would you want your girlfriend writing to some stranger? Especially one in here?” Hux gestured vaguely to their surroundings with a look of distaste.

“Shut up,” Kylo muttered, but he was definitely worried now and Hux just shrugged again, his point made. Kylo hadn’t thought about the implications of her being in a relationship, figuring that she since she had kept writing him after she started college that he was in the clear, at least for a while. But Hux was right… If he had a girlfriend, he certainly wouldn’t want her to spend her time writing to a murderer.

Unease settled over him as he opened her letter but he tucked the concern away. There was nothing he could do about it now, so it was something to dwell on another day.

_Kylo,_

_The Arthur O'Shaughnessy poem that you wrote for me was simply beautiful. I can see why someone who creates such beautiful art would like that one._

_As it turns out, your love of sending me poetry was also very convenient. We are doing a short bit on poetry for my English class this semester and my knowledge of amazing poets certainly impressed my professor. I told her that I had a wonderful friend that was extremely serious about discussing (and often debating) the best works with me and she seemed suitably impressed._

_Of course, I already knew how blessed I was to have you, but that was an unexpected and nice benefit._

_I am very pleased to tell you that I got an ‘A’ on my most recent math exam, which is also unexpectedly good news because I despise math in all of its forms (as I am sure you know by now because I think I might tell you every time I write)._

His lips twitched a bit at that. She absolutely had told him that she hated it. In every single letter since her first math class of the semester. Her current record for mentioning it was three times in a single correspondence.

_My other two classes are still going just as well, even if I will never understand why I need to take a psychology class as part of my general education credits. The subject is tolerable enough, I suppose, though it won’t ever be my favorite. My next exam for that class is in a week, but I think I’m well prepared._

_My humanities class has proven itself to be the most interesting so far, and luckily I was able to get that class with Rose and Finn, which only makes it even more enjoyable._

_The professor has focused the curriculum around learning about social issues and injustices. It’s been unpleasantly educational, but fortunately I wasn’t the only one in the class that was surprised by much of what we discovered._

_We learned about the human and ecological costs of fast fashion last week, which I think will keep me from buying anything but used clothing for at least a year. I will come have to come up with something else to spend my little bit of pocket money on._

_This week and next week we are focusing on the justice system. There are significant problems, of course, with the structure of our laws and the way that they are implemented, but one thing in particular caught most of my attention._

_I’m doing my semester paper over the subject because it’s infuriating._

_Did you know that if your conviction had come after a certain Supreme Court ruling in 2012, that they couldn’t have given you a life sentence without parole? They decided in Miller v Alabama that giving juvenile offenders life without parole was a violation of their 8 th amendment protections against excessive or cruel and unusual punishments!_

_That's so unfair to you because you were convicted in 2003. If it is cruel to the people convicted after 2012, then it is cruel to people convicted prior to 2012! I couldn’t believe that the ruling did not extent to the people that were already in prison._

_The more I learn about everything that happens in prison and the system that puts people there the angrier I get. Someone needs to address the lack of consistency in the way that these things are handled!_

_My professor says that it will make a good paper because I feel so strongly about it, but I wish there were more ways that I could help people like you. The ones that have been unfairly treated in some way. Not just that you shouldn’t be in prison for life, which I really don’t think you should, but also the complete media frenzy around your trial._

_The judge shouldn’t have allowed all of that, Kylo. You were a minor and you deserved protection and privacy._

_It’s not much to offer but I hope that you’re doing well today, and every day, and that you know that I am always thinking of you. I try to cheer you up and let you experience as much of college and normal life as I can through these letters._

_The are a million little things that I notice every day that I probably wouldn’t notice otherwise, because I keep track of them in my mind to share them with you later. Funny stories, or if someone has a hairstyle that I really like, or how many times a day I find myself talking about you in conversation…._

She went on, and each word kept the smile on his face for another minute longer.

***

_I know_

That’s all that he had said to her about how his fate might have been changed if the date of his conviction had been different.

He’d written back to her about poetry and college and friendships and her newest rant about how much she loathed math, but all he had said about something that could have altered the course of his entire life was-

_I know_

She was still fuming the morning after reading it, tapping her finger in irritation on her thigh as she listened halfheartedly to the day’s lecture.

Sure, maybe she should just be glad that he’d resigned himself to the inevitable- since there was not one single thing at all that he could do to change it- but that went against every instinct she possessed. It wasn’t right, it wasn’t fair, and he should not be made to suffer this way, no matter what he had done.

“Rey?”

“Hmm? Oh!” Rey looked around with dawning realization to find that most of the class had already filed out the door, leaving only Rose and Finn who were both looking at her expectantly, their faces alive with barely repressed humor. “I’m sorry,” said quickly, shoving her laptop and her water bottle in her bag and jumping to her feet. “I must not have been paying attention.”

Rose rolled her eyes and laughed as they started to follow Finn out of the classroom. They each had at least two hours until the start of their next class, and they had decided to use today’s break to get started on writing their semester papers since it was worth a full thirty percent of their final course grade.

They all stopped at the front of the classroom when the professor called out, “Rey, do you mind staying behind for a moment? I’d like to talk to you about your paper.”

Dr. Fischer had always been easygoing, and they all liked her well enough, but Finn and Rose still winced before they promised that they’d meet her in the library when she finished.

“Is something wrong with the outline I turned in?” Rey asked when the door had closed behind them.

“Quite the opposite actually,” the professor responded, turning in her seat to face Rey with a wide smile. “I knew from our class discussions that this topic was something you were passionate about, but the paper that you are proposing is very in depth and already well researched. Truthfully, I’ve had many students come through my class with law school aspirations and not one of them was demonstrating work at this level.”

Rey shifted uncomfortably, tugging the strap of her backpack higher on her shoulder, and tightening her grip on the phone in her hand. “Oh, well, thank you…it’s just…I’m not planning on studying law,” she said in a rush. “I’ve never even considered being a lawyer.”

Dr Fischer nodded politely. “Yes, I remember you said your primary interest right now was early childhood education. Is that right?” She waited for Rey’s mumbled agreement before continuing, “That’s an admirable field and one that I’m sure you’ll excel in if that is truly where your passions lie. I would not be doing my duty as your teacher, however, if I didn’t tell you that it would be a waste of your potential to go that route if your heart isn’t in it.”

“My heart is in helping people,” Rey told her honestly, “in making a change in the world.”

She may have been uncertain of what exactly her future career might consist of, but that much she had always known. After all the challenges that she gone through in her life, it wouldn’t be right to hoard the gifts she had been given. She had been helped, and loved, and she wanted to pass that along to others.

Dr. Fischer looked at her for a moment before setting her glasses on top of her head and leaning back in her chair. “Not all lawyers are the bloodsucking leeches that you hear everyone making jokes about,” she said carefully. “There are two sides to every case, two sides to every policy. My husband is an environmental lawyer. He works for a firm that handles litigation against companies that are engaging in pollution or destruction of habitat. There are also nonprofit organizations, pro bono cases, and many other ways that someone with an interest in the law could have a positive influence on the world.”

Rey tucked her bottom lip between her teeth, considering. “I’ll think about it,” she promised.

“That’s all I can ask,” Dr. Fischer said with an encouraging smile. “And don’t forget about the quiz on Monday.” Rey recognized the dismissal when the professor turned back to her papers.

She said a hasty goodbye and slipped out the door, quickly calculating that she still had plenty of time to catch up with Finn and Rose and get some research done.

September had not done much to cool the air, and the leaves on the trees outside were still green, but something about being back at school always made things feel like fall. They’d be carving pumpkins and picking costumes by this time next month, and Rose was already planning a Christmas toy drive for the prayer group.

After all, she had insisted, you couldn’t start too soon on those types of things.

Rey was rapidly coming to realize that Rose did more to actually lead the bible group than she did. Rey was happy to provide snacks and establish dates on the calendar, but Rose was the one that came up with the good ideas and provided that necessary motivation.

It was something that had been tumbling around in her head for a while now, and she was desperately worried that her father would be disappointed if he found out that she wasn’t living up her mother’s precedent when came to church involvement.

She was also very sure that Rose deserved more credit than she was being given, and it was difficult to resolve those two conflicts in her mind.

Maybe she could ask Rose to come early to the next meeting so they could discuss it. Rose could have an official title, Event Coordinator or maybe even be a co-leader for the group. If that wasn’t a thing, then Rey would just make it one…

She set the thought aside when she swung open the heavy doors that led to the blessedly air-conditioned sanctuary of the library. She was sweating through her t-shirt from the short walk and paused gratefully just inside the large well-lit room, letting the cool air blow over her, as she looked around the room for her friends.

It was lined all around with shelves of books, with sections on the interior that divided the space into further book storage, rows of computers, or the neat little rows of tables that provided comfortable study space to a few dozen students. Rey passed several that seemed to have fallen asleep in their books, and she chuckled as she walked by.

Next to church, Rey had always though that libraries were the most likely place to find God. There was always feeling of quiet contemplation, an atmosphere of knowledge and wisdom and peaceful rest. Even though every library was different, the smell of books was always comfortingly the same.

It was like a like an infinite number of homes waiting to welcome you in with the turn of a page.

Rose and Finn were already seated at a table, talking quietly as they unpacked what they needed from their bags. They both looked up expectantly when she dropped into a chair across from them.

“So, how’d it go?” Finn whispered.

Rey sighed and settled down lower into her chair. “It was fine, she just wanted to tell me she liked the outline for my paper.”

“She asked you to stay behind for that?” Rose asked, peeking around to make sure no one was looking before stuffing a piece of chocolate in her mouth.

She slapped one into Rey’s outstretched palm and Rey popped it in before answering. “I guess she also wanted to suggest that I look into changing my major. Do something law related, instead of teaching.”

Finn shook his head and laughed. “You’ve never wanted to be anything but a teacher.”

“My dad wants me to be a teacher,” Rey corrected carefully, deliberately keeping the edge of frustration out of her voice.

“Oh… isn’t that what you want, too? To be a teacher like your mom and stuff?”

“I never really thought about it,” Rey said with a shrug. She pulled out her laptop and looked at Finn with a frown. “I mean, about other options, you know? I just figured my Dad kinda knew what was best since I didn’t know what I wanted to do.”

“Law is pretty cool, I guess,” Rose said. “Lots of years in school, though, and I’ve heard it’s very competitive.”

“Do you think I can’t get in to law school?” Rey paused at that- she hadn’t considered the possibility that she might not get in _if_ she did decide to pursue it…and she bristled a little at the thought. 

“That’s not what I meant,” Rose said, oblivious to the tumult that her words had set off in Rey’s mind. “I just wondered if the motivation for law school would still be there, once you aren’t writing to Kylo anymore.”

“What does Kylo have to do with law school?” Rey asked the question, but Finn turned to look at Rose, also clearly wanting an answer to explain the connection that she saw between the two.

“I just kinda figured that’s where this sudden interest came from,” Rose said, looking to Finn for confirmation that her assumption made sense. He nodded and she sat back in her chair, appeased that he agreed with her.

“Ok, but why would I stop writing to him? It’s not like he’s getting out of prison.” Rey knew her tone was surly, but she had gotten tired of these talks that seemed to center around criticizing her friendship with Kylo.

“I notice you didn’t deny that he’s the source of you interest in law,” Rose pointed out smugly, “but I just assumed you didn’t intend to write to him forever. We never meant for this be a permanent thing. It was a charitable gesture, not a real friendship.”

“It _is_ a real friendship,” Rey said defensively.

“Ok, maybe it is _for_ _now_ , but what are you going to do when you get a boyfriend that doesn’t want you writing to a convicted murderer that’s serving life in prison? I mean, your dad was already not exactly thrilled about it.”

“I wouldn’t want Rose doing that,” Finn said, chiming in and shaking his head. He placed his hand protectively over Rose’s. “It sounds dangerous.”

“I guess it’s a good thing I don’t have a boyfriend,” Rey snapped, loudly enough to have heads turning in the quiet room.

Rose leaned forward to whisper, “Not yet, but I guarantee you that you will. _Everyone_ dates in college.”

“I won’t. I’m not interested,” Rey insisted stubbornly, ignoring that she had seen plenty of attractive men on campus that she _might_ have considered dating if they had asked prior to this very irritating conversation.

“Yeah? What about Poe Dameron?”

She gaped at Finn for a moment before answering. “What about him?”

“Oh, come on! Surely you’ve noticed how much he’s been at your house lately?’

“Talking to my dad,” Rey began.

“And looking at you.” Finn waggled his eyebrows suggestively. “I think someone has _finally_ caught his attention.”

“He would never look at me like that,” Rey sputtered, but there was a small spark of hope deep inside her chest. “He’s too close with my dad.”

“You’re an adult now,” Rose reminded her with a pointed look. “Besides, I wouldn’t be surprised if your dad turned out to be really supportive. He loves Poe, and he knows Poe would be a good husband. He’s always been nice and he’s a stable guy, isn’t he? You’d have a good life.”

She absolutely would, Rey knew that. Poe wasn’t the kind of man to raise his voice or his hand, and beyond that he was gentle with kids and was an avid lover of animals of all kinds. He worshiped God and respected his mother and would work hard to provide her with a nice house and a large family.

Rey had always wanted that- a home and kids of her own- and Poe was the only specific face that had ever featured as the other half in the marriage that was at the center of her domestic daydreams.

“You’ve _always_ been into Poe,” Rose continued, watching as Rey nibbled uncertainly on her bottom lip, “but we all know how he would feel about Kylo and this law school stuff. If Poe’s going to be taking over a church of his own, he’s going to need a wife that can help with that. It’s something to think about.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The poem referenced in Rey's letter is this one:
> 
> Ode
> 
> We are the music makers,  
> And we are the dreamers of dreams,  
> Wandering by lone sea-breakers,  
> And sitting by desolate streams; —  
> World-losers and world-forsakers,  
> On whom the pale moon gleams:  
> Yet we are the movers and shakers  
> Of the world for ever, it seems.
> 
> With wonderful deathless ditties  
> We build up the world's great cities,  
> And out of a fabulous story  
> We fashion an empire's glory:  
> One man with a dream, at pleasure,  
> Shall go forth and conquer a crown;  
> And three with a new song's measure  
> Can trample a kingdom down.
> 
> We, in the ages lying,  
> In the buried past of the earth,  
> Built Nineveh with our sighing,  
> And Babel itself in our mirth;  
> And o'erthrew them with prophesying  
> To the old of the new world's worth;  
> For each age is a dream that is dying,  
> Or one that is coming to birth.
> 
> A breath of our inspiration  
> Is the life of each generation;  
> A wondrous thing of our dreaming  
> Unearthly, impossible seeming —  
> The soldier, the king, and the peasant  
> Are working together in one,  
> Till our dream shall become their present,  
> And their work in the world be done.
> 
> They had no vision amazing  
> Of the goodly house they are raising;  
> They had no divine foreshowing  
> Of the land to which they are going:  
> But on one man's soul it hath broken,  
> A light that doth not depart;  
> And his look, or a word he hath spoken,  
> Wrought flame in another man's heart.
> 
> And therefore to-day is thrilling  
> With a past day's late fulfilling;  
> And the multitudes are enlisted  
> In the faith that their fathers resisted,  
> And, scorning the dream of to-morrow,  
> Are bringing to pass, as they may,  
> In the world, for its joy or its sorrow,  
> The dream that was scorned yesterday.
> 
> But we, with our dreaming and singing,  
> Ceaseless and sorrowless we!  
> The glory about us clinging  
> Of the glorious futures we see,  
> Our souls with high music ringing:  
> O men! it must ever be  
> That we dwell, in our dreaming and singing,  
> A little apart from ye.
> 
> For we are afar with the dawning  
> And the suns that are not yet high,  
> And out of the infinite morning  
> Intrepid you hear us cry —  
> How, spite of your human scorning,  
> Once more God's future draws nigh,  
> And already goes forth the warning  
> That ye of the past must die.
> 
> Great hail! we cry to the comers  
> From the dazzling unknown shore;  
> Bring us hither your sun and your summers;  
> And renew our world as of yore;  
> You shall teach us your song's new numbers,  
> And things that we dreamed not before:  
> Yea, in spite of a dreamer who slumbers,  
> And a singer who sings no more.
> 
> By- Arthur O'Shaughnessy


	8. Follow Your Own Heart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord.   
> "Plans to prosper you and not to harm you,  
> plans to give you hope and a future."- Jeremiah 29:11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW-
> 
> I warned in the tags that we would have some Damerey stuff happening in the background of this story and its been hinted at but it's going to be a bigger thing in this chapter.

She thought about her uncertain future for weeks, in the quiet spaces between her classes when she was alone, and late at night as she lay awake and watched the moonlight and shadows dance across her ceiling.

There was no denying the joy that she experienced as she worked her way through the research for her paper. She was fascinated and often horrified by the thing she discovered as she dug deeper into the processes of the criminal justice system. It was large and lumbering and often unequal in ways that she found incredibly frustrating.

It was clear to her that there was a desperate need for change. For that to happen there needed to be people willing to fight for those that were being treated unfairly and did not have the means to escape their circumstances. It would be a difficult career, and require years of investment in her education, but it would be deeply rewarding, she was so certain that she could feel it in her bones.

The work she put into just her class paper was equally emotionally draining and mentally stimulating. She passed hours alone in the library soaking up all of the knowledge that she could and huffing in frustration as she encountered case after case of kids who deserved so much better than the fate they had been dealt. Some days she wept quietly, but always she was filled with determination that things could be changed. 

But, increasingly often, she came home energized and excited from her schoolwork to find Poe’s car parked in her driveway.

He had still not said or done anything definitive, but she watched him closer now, after her conversation with Finn and Rose in the library, and she soon realized that the two of them may have been picking up signs that she had not been experienced enough to see. He smiled happily at her whenever she entered a room, made excuses to stay close to her while she was there, and watched her closely whenever she left.

It sent a jolt of excitement through her whenever she caught him watching her with those warm brown eyes. His face was so kind, so handsome, the idea that he might have taken an interest in her seemed almost too good to be true.

The Wednesday before Halloween he volunteered to help carry in the church’s decorations for their annual trick-or-treat event, something that she was nearly certain that he had done only because he knew she would be there.

Instead of a regular meeting of their bible group, Rose had suggested that they spend their evening working to get the decorations hung and the games set up. Halloween fell on a Saturday this year, so they were expecting more families than usual, and they didn’t want to disappoint.

Some of the other local churches frowned on their participation in a holiday with such pagan origins, but Rey always loved seeing the kids in their costumes- they were adorable dressed up as superheroes and bumblebees. She’d always been grateful that her father believed in accepting the idea that you couldn’t stop people from celebrating, so you might as well join in the fun. All he asked was that they refrained from dressing as monsters and devils, and most were happy enough to show up in more wholesome costumes.

Rey had already spent over an hour attaching slips of paper with encouraging bible verses to the sticks of black and orange suckers that put temporary spider tattoos on your tongue, when Rose showed up with several huge bags of candy herself.

“We can’t forget to pick up the apples on Saturday,” she said, her smile huge as she dropped the bags on the table with a thump and looked around. “The kids really enjoyed bobbing for apples last year.”

“It’s on my list of chores for that morning already,” Rey said with a reassuringly, dropping the last sucker in a big orange bowl and opening the first bag of Rose’s candy. It was chocolate, and she grabbed a piece for herself once she had emptied the contents into the next bowl. She was going to end up eating her weight in candy this week, but she had no regrets.

“Any problems with set up so far?” Rose asked, grabbing her own candy, and biting into it with a satisfied hum.

“Not really. Just the usual complaints from Mrs. Nu, same as every Halloween.”

“We told her she could stay home.”

“I wish she would have,” Rey said honestly, sincerely hoping that listening to her complain about how they were all celebrating the devil’s birthday and corrupting children in the process wouldn’t dampen her best friend’s enjoyment of the evening.

Rose was the new co-leader of the bible group, and Rey wanted tonight to go especially well since she was eager and excited about the first task in her new role. Rey couldn’t help but feel a bit of guilt that she had never been as enthusiastic about their projects, she enjoyed it but…it didn’t fill her with the same sense of purpose that it did Rose.

Her father had been surprisingly supportive of the change once she explained how much work Rose had put into the group, and he hadn’t questioned Rey’s own commitment as she feared he might, but she still wondered if she had let him down. Maybe he was secretly disappointed, but he didn’t want to hurt her feelings by telling her.

“I see you’ve brought company,” Rose said, interrupting Rey’s worries and tipping her head across the room to where Poe was standing on a small stepstool with his arms stretched high to hang orange and back streamers from the ceiling.

“Hmm, he offered to help carry all the decorations from the attic. He was at our house anyway, so he said it wasn’t a problem” Rey said, a blush riding hot on her cheeks.

“Yeah, I’m sure he had nothing better to do tonight,” Rose giggled. “I _told_ you.”

“I know you did. Now, _hush_ , before someone else hears you,” Rey looked around to make sure no one else was close enough to eavesdrop, but she couldn’t wipe the smile off her face. “What do I do?” she whispered frantically.

“Smile at him,” Rose instructed. “Sit close to him whenever you can, laugh at his dumb jokes, make eye contact, touch his arm. He’ll get the hint that you are interested in him, too.”

Rey bit her lip and peaked at Poe out the corner of her eye. Rose had gotten Finn to fall desperately in love with her, so she must know something about how to get and keep a man’s interest. “Right. I can do that…can’t I?”

“ _Yes_ ,” Rose said firmly. “You absolutely can. Now go offer to help him hang those streamers.”

“I mean, he’s been doing it himself for ten minutes…” Rey said, glancing at him again and then away just as quickly when she found him already looking at her.

Rose rolled her eyes. “That’s not the point! You aren’t actually helping him- you’re being available. Just go hold the tape and streamers and don’t forget to smile!”

Rey was afraid it would be awkward, but it wasn’t so hard after all to hold the supplies and smile every time he looked at her. His hand brushed hers every time she handed him a new piece of tape and she blushed; his hand was soft and warm where it skimmed hers.

By the time the decorations were hung, and Poe went home, she was riding high on excitement and success. She might actually have flirted with him, she realized, though she would have to find Rose and ask her to make sure.

Almost everyone had already left, the rest were standing around in small groups chatting as the evening wrapped up. It didn’t take her long to spot Rose on the other side of the room, spreading a cheap plastic tablecloth with smiling jack-o-lanterns on it over their folding dessert table.

Rey hurried toward her but her steps faltered when she overheard Mrs. Nu whispering loudly to a group of the other women, all of them clearly unaware that she wandered so close. “She can’t even run the group by herself,” the older woman sniffed disdainfully. “Certainly, her mother never had such problems. Kate Johnson was actually devoted to the church. She would have been ashamed of that child if she had lived to see this. Did you see the way she was throwing herself at Mr. Dameron tonight? I thought surely that he would have had more sense. He’s a good Christian man, pity for him to get his head turned by girl like that…”

Not able to listen to another word, Rey turned and fled, tears blurring her vision as the words she had not been meant to hear amplified her own self-doubts. Mrs. Nu was often mean, and was always a terrible gossip, but maybe she was right, maybe she wasn’t fit to take over for her mother.

She tried to keep her eyes on God and her faith, but maybe she had let herself be led astray recently. Rose and Finn had already pointed out how her new interests conflicted with what expected from her, and it seemed that even Mrs. Nu had noticed that she was preoccupied and not giving her full attention to the things that should have mattered.

She sank down in her father’s chair, hiding in his office in the dark as she let the tears flow. She was crying so hard she didn’t hear the door open.

“You don’t have to be just like your mother for her to be proud of you.”

Rey jumped and looked up to find old Mrs. Kanata standing on the other side of her father’s desk, watching her from behind her coke bottle glasses. She sniffled and rubbed her tears away with the back of her hand.

“She was just so good, so perfect, and everyone loved her…”

“You’re right that we all loved her, but she wasn’t perfect, child. You just loved her so much that you couldn’t see the flaws. Nothing wrong with that, all things considered, and she loved you just as much. More importantly she _knew_ you. She took you, chose you, when you were wild and mean and she loved you anyway. She wouldn’t want you to be unhappy woman that’s trying to be something you’re not. She would want you to be the best version of yourself, because that’s what God created you to be.”

“But Mrs. Nu…”

“I already gave that woman a piece of my mind, and it’s not the first time. She’s upset my girls too much already. Don’t you worry about what she said. Not about your mama, and not about Mr. Dameron. She was the biggest flirt in this town when she was your age and she might have forgotten that little fact, but I assure you I haven’t. I’m old enough to remember plenty of things that she’d rather be forgotten.”

Rey giggled a little, almost as surprised by Mrs. Kanata’s fierce protectiveness as she was the idea that Mrs. Nu had once been a flirt.

“There’s never been anyone interested in me before,” she admitted. “Maybe I _was_ too flirtatious. I wouldn’t want him to think poorly of me.”

“If you were being flirtatious, so was he. I don’t think there’s a thing wrong with talking to a nice man that wants to get to know you better.” She was quiet for a moment, pensive as she looked at Rey. Sometimes I felt like Mrs. Kanata could see right through to the heart of a person when she looked at them that intently. “I’m going to give you one more word of unsolicited advice from an old woman…” she said eventually. “Poe Dameron is a good man, but you need more than a good man to have a happy life. You need the _right_ man and that’ll be the one who fits into what God calls you to do and sees after your happiness as much as he expects you to see to his own.”

Impossible dreams of law school flitted shamefully through her mind. “What if _this_ isn’t what I’m supposed to do?” she asked, waving her arm around to indicate the small office. “Would God call me away from the church?”

“From your seat on Sunday? I don’t think so. But not everyone is meant to marry a pastor and spend their lives worrying over a congregation. Kate was happy with that life, and I know you saw how fulfilled it made her, but you are not your mama. Open your heart to God, really listen to Him, and you’ll know what He has planned for you.”

***

Bolstered by her conversation with Mrs. Kanata, Rey sat down at the breakfast table the next day with a specific goal in mind.

“Good morning,” she chirped happily, and her father looked up between sips of orange juice with a smile.

“You seem happy,” he remarked. “Might that have something to do with Poe helping you out last night?” She blushed, and he laughed quietly. “Poe’s a good man, the kind of man that I always prayed would come along and take good care of my daughter.”

“Yes, he is,” Rey agreed. “Though I don’t think we’re anywhere near him thinking about that.” The look on his face told her plainly that he felt otherwise, but she hadn’t intended to discuss her potential relationships. “I, uh, actually wanted to talk to you about something else.”

“Oh?” He set his glass on the table and turned in his chair so that he could face her directly. He had always been good about that, about listening with his full attention. She’d never felt like what she had to say was less important to him than anything else he might be doing.

“I’ve been thinking about school…” she began, and her stomach rolled with nerves when his brows drew together in concern. “I’m not dropping out! I just…thought I might change my major. Maybe do something else besides teaching.”

“Oh,” his face relaxed into a smile. “Well, your mother was an excellent teacher, but there are certainly other things you could do.”

“Yeah, but,” she sighed, “how do I know which thing is the right one? How do I know which way God is calling me?”

“You were made perfectly for God’s plans for you. When you find that path, I believe you’ll know it. You've always had a good head on your shoulders, and you make good choices. if you ask, God will guide you.”

She hummed her agreement as she finally poured the milk into her cereal bowl. “That’s exactly what Mrs. Kanata said last night, but I feel better knowing that you feel the same way. I’ve been worried about a lot of things lately; afraid you’ll be disappointed in me.”

“I don’t think that’s possible, Rey. You’ve been such a bright spot in my life, especially since your mom…well, anyway, I’m just so proud of the responsible young woman you’ve become. Do you have an idea of what you might like to do instead, if you think teaching isn’t for you?”

Her hand stilled as she reached for her spoon, his question lodging her heart in her throat. Memories of her conversation with Rose and Finn flashed across her mind, and she realized suddenly that she couldn’t bear to hear it if her father had the same doubts.

He did seem awfully pleased about Poe, and nothing had been decided for sure yet. Maybe Pow wouldn’t even like her that much once they spent more together…or maybe he would and he’d surprise her by being completely supportive of her goals.

“Not yet,” she said, picking up the spoon and giving her cereal an absent swirl. “I’m still mulling things over.”

“I’m sure you’ll think of just the right thing,” he said, patting her hand and turning back to his own breakfast. 

***

Halloween at the church went well. The adults had nearly as much fun as the children, and because it was a Saturday night, many of the parishioners stayed later than they might have done otherwise.

Rey was having so much fun with her friends- they had ended up bobbing for apples themselves after handing out candy and helping with the games- that she was reluctant to leave when her dad decided to head home for the night.

“We can stay and clean up,” she said, indicating herself, Rose, and Finn.

“How are you going to get home?” he asked, and she remembered abruptly that they had decided to come together in one car. “Will one of them bring you?”

“I can bring her, Ryan,” said a deep voice from behind her and Rey turned to find Poe standing there with a smile. “It’s not a problem.”

Her father didn’t hesitate, and it occurred to Rey for the first time that the two of them must be closer than she realized for Poe to call him by his first name- most of the congregation referred to him as ‘Pastor Johnson’.

“Thanks, Poe,” he said, reaching out to shake the younger man’s hand. “Keep her safe, will you?”

“Of course. I’ll bring her home as soon as she’s done here.”

He was attentive and polite while they all swept up discarded candy wrappers and wiped up spilled juice, and Rey giggled each time Finn caught her eye with a meaningful look.

He opened the door to his sensible white sedan for her when they leave, and the inside of it smelled like new car and his cologne. She kept her hands folded nervously in her lap during the shirt drive and shot him a wobbly smile when he pulled into the driveway and parked the car. The lights inside the house were already out, her father had clearly already gone to bed. He obviously trusted that Poe would bring her home quickly and safely.

Poe was watching her with an unreadable look on his face, and she felt suddenly small and inadequate, all of her doubts resurfacing in a rush.

“Thank you,” she said, breaking the tense silence in the car as she reached for the door handle.

“Rey, wait,” he said softly, wrapping one warm hand around her wrist. She stilled under the command, her skin tingling under the soft caress of his fingers on her arm. Her heart was pounding in her chest so loudly that she was certain he could hear it as he leaned closer and laid his lips gently against her own. His mouth was warm and pleasant, and she laid her hand hesitantly on his broad chest, twisting her fingers in the soft fabric of his shirt.

He didn't linger for long, nor did he attempt to part her lips for a more thorough exploration. He smiled at her and she thought he seemed pleased with her response though she noted that his heartbeat beneath her hand was steady- without any sign of her own racing thoughts and frazzled nerves. When he tucked a stray piece of her hair behind her ear and his hand stayed, cupping her cheek as he traced the curve of her cheek with his thumb.

“You’re so pretty,” he told her, and her heart leapt with joy. No one had ever thought she was pretty before, and this was _Poe_. “I’d like to spend more time with you. I don’t think your dad would mind, and you’re…” He paused, squeezing her hand softly as he considered his words. “You’re exactly the kind of woman I’d like to build a life and a family with.”

Something inside her shifted, her excitement dimming slightly at his words. “What kind of woman is that exactly?” she asked quietly.

He looked at her thoughtfully, not sensing the subtle shift in her tone. “You’re kind and generous. You put your faith in God, where it should be. I’ve never known you to be rebellious or disrespectful. You’re a good, modest Christian woman, exactly the kind that any man would be proud to have for a wife.”

It was a very practical assessment that left her feeling a bit cold on the inside, even though his hand was still warm on her cheek. She couldn’t fault him for it, not really, when she herself had often thought about the attributes that would make him a perfect husband, but…

“Can I see you again?” he asked. “Alone?”

“Alone…as in a date?”

“Yes, a date. I can talk to your dad tomorrow, ask him for his blessing.”

She smiled, concealing her sudden doubts as well as she could. She was not going to through away the opportunity that she had always wanted when she couldn’t even put a name to her hesitation. “That would be great,” she told him. “I’m sure he won’t mind at all. He trusts you.”

"Good,I'm really glad," he said, letting go of her wrist and watching until she was safely inside the house before he started to leave. The sound of his tires on the gravel driveway faded as he pulled back out onto the main road, and she slumped against the door, her thoughts racing.

He was certainly eager, and he seemed sincere in his intentions…but was he interested in her as a person? Or was he looking for someone that checked off the boxes of what he believed would make a good wife?

His kiss had been soft and sweet, and his hands had not wandered, but he had he felt anything at all? Was his lack of passion due to politeness and good manners or disinterest?

She sighed as she sat down at the dining room table, a late-night bowl of self-pity ice cream in her hand. Surely the last thing she needed after a whole evening sneaking Halloween candy, but the flavor of sweet creamy vanilla on her tongue soothed some of her slightly wounded pride.

She flicked through the day’s stack of mail as she ate and smiled sadly as she pulled out a letter from Kylo.

Here she was, feeling sorry for herself, when she had certainly still had a better day than he’d experienced. She’d wanted to send him some candy for the holiday, but they weren’t allowed to send food to the prisoners. She knew because she had looked up the rules specifically.

_Rey,_

_I’m glad that your math exam was not as bad as you thought it would be (yes, I know, you still hate math but you’re doing so well), and that you are still kicking ass in your other classes._

She giggled, shaking her head. Sometime over the past few months she had come to find his irreverent attitude reassuring. It was just so uniquely Kylo, and she couldn’t imagine wanting him to change it, though she knew that her father and her friends would have been upset about his language and her ready acceptance of it. She really ought to be trying to discourage him and set a good example, but she didn’t have the heart to do so.

_I’m not surprised that you’re considering changing your major. You were never excited about teaching and you’ve been excited about law since you started that paper you’re working on. Your teacher obviously has faith in you, and I am sorry that your friends can’t see how smart and capable you are._

_You can do anything you want to do, I know you can._

_I’m the last person who can give you advice about what plans God has in store for your life but think you should follow your own heart. No one else has to live your life, and you shouldn’t be tied down by what someone else wants for you. You have a whole life of freedom ahead of you, and you should use it to be as happy as possible. Chase all of those dreams, and to hell with anyone who doesn’t like it._

_You're going to be such a good lawyer._

She quickly scanned the rest of the letter, shaking her head when he promised to try and have good Halloween because she knew he had _not,_ and then let the paper fall back onto the table.

He had such faith in her, and it felt so good to have someone on her side that actually knew how high her ambitions had become, but there was no way that he would understand her reluctance. She had already explained to him her concerns about her father’s disappointment and her mother’s legacy, but she hadn’t told him anything at all about one of the biggest reasons behind her hesitation- she hadn’t told him about Poe.

She’d told him about everything else in her life, but not that. She wasn’t sure why she had kept that a secret, but every time she had tried to bring it up the words had refused to come, like she couldn’t find the right way to tell him. She was sure that something so simple wouldn’t change their friendship, and she wasn’t ashamed of her interest in Poe, but she felt uneasy at the idea of those parts of her life connecting.

She never actually mentioned Kylo around Poe either, she realized with a frown, and her friends had thankfully stopped asking about him when they realized that she couldn’t be swayed from her decision to keep in touch with him. Kylo would probably have been happy for her if she had found a way to mention Poe, but she doubted very much that Poe would feel the same way about Kylo. 

Over the past few months Kylo had become something of a sanctuary for the rebellious parts of her desires, the parts that didn’t fit into the neat boxes of everyone else’s expectations. He encouraged her in anything at all that she wanted to do because he didn’t care about anyone else or what the world wanted- he only cared about her and what made her happy. He knew all of her flaws and ugly parts, the parts she kept hidden away from everyone else, and he still wanted to be friends with her.

Somehow, she thought that if she asked Kylo what he liked about her, his answer would be very different from Poe’s.

She picked up the letter and looked at it again. 

_Follow your own heart_

Everyone else had told her to heed God's guidance, and God had directed her to Kylo. If he thought that she should follow her heart, then maybe that was just what God wanted her to hear.


	9. Just You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Also, that women should adorn themselves in respectable apparel,  
> With modesty and self-control,  
> Not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly attire,  
> But with what is proper attire for women who profess godliness- with good works – 1 Timothy 2:9-10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW/CW- discussion of an incident where a main character experiences of sexual harassment, victim blaming

The letter came not long after Halloween, her words bubbling with excitement that was palpable enough to nearly jump off the page.

_Kylo,_

_I did it! I submitted my change of major form! I am officially now pursing a degree in political science. I still have a lot to do if I’m going to get into law school, but I feel so good about taking that first step._

_I haven’t told my Dad what yet, not exactly, but he knows I was thinking about not being a teacher and he seemed supportive. I just think it would be a good idea to wait until I can show him a few semesters of good grades to prove to him that I’m serious about this._

_Rose and Finn were decent about it, if not exactly excited. They think I should tell my Dad now, but they’ve agreed not to mention it until I’ve finished a few more classes._

_Thanks for encouraging in me, for believing in me. I don’t think I would have had the courage to do it without you…”_

It felt good, the idea that he had truly changed someone’s life for the better. There was someone out there that was glad that he had been there for him and they were happy to know him. It wasn’t pity or charity that kept her writing to him now, it was a shared connection. 

_Rey,_

_I’m so proud of you._

_I don’t know if I’ve told you, but it’s my birthday coming up. I’m going to be twenty-eight and it’s been more than twelve years since I’ve gotten anything for my birthday. This is the best present that anyone could have gotten me…_

And it was, truly, until the next letter came with a gift that he wasn't expecting.

He didn’t recognize it for what it was at first. Paper that was thicker and stiffer than the lined stuff she usually wrote on fell out of the envelope to land by his feet. It was a white rectangle, unlined and with a single line of script written neatly on the back in Rey’s handwriting.

“ _Just to let you know I was thinking about you!_ ”

Puzzled he turned it over in his hands to find that it was a glossy photograph. Standing in a simple kitchen and holding a cupcake with red frosting and a single lit candle was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.

His breath caught in his throat, his fingers trembled, his heart began to pound as he drank in the details of her. Her hair was a deep rich brown and was pulled back from her face in a series of buns in a style that was fun and casual enough for a day of classes. She was wearing a plain gray t shirt and a simple gold cross hung from a chain around her neck. She was delicately built, lean and slender, but it was her face that captivated him. A pert nose dusted with freckles. A soft mouth, pink and turned up in a wide smile. Hazel eyes brimming with kindness and fierce intelligence.

The sounds of the prison faded away, a dull buzzing of insignificant noise as he stared at her. His eyes roamed the photo again and again, trying to memorize every line of her as though someone might come along and try to snatch the picture away from him.

This was Rey.

His Rey.

He held the picture in his hand for a long time, feeling more connected to her than he ever had before, and then he hung it up on the wall beside his bed. He could see her now when he woke up and before he drifted off to sleep.

“What’s that?”

Kylo sighed, glanced at Hux annoyance. The things he would do for just ounce of privacy. “Nothing, it’s none of your business.”

Hux ignored him, standing up to crowd Kylo’s bunk and peer over him at the photo tacked to the wall. “Is that her?”

Kylo shrugged. “Yeah, that’s her.”

Hux laughed, the rumble shaking his whole body so hard he had to sit back down on his own bunk again.

“Something funny? There’s not a damn thing to laugh at, she’s perfect.”

“That’s what’s so funny. You were already half gone over this girl and now you find out she looks like _that_. You’re _so_ fucked.”

Kylo pressed his lips together and swallowed hard. “She’s just a friend. Rey’s got a whole life out there without me.”

Hux nodded in agreement. “Uh, huh. And it kills you. Not that I blame you. It would kill me, too, if I had a girl that looked that on the outside and I knew I was never getting out of here.” For a moment, there was something on Hux’s face that looked like pity, but it was gone so quickly that Kylo was certain that he had imagined it.

Kylo didn’t answer, but he didn’t take her picture down off the wall as he settled it his bunk to read her letter.

_Kylo,_

_That’s a poor excuse for a birthday gift. Presents are supposed to be things that make you happy, not things that make other people happy. _

If she only knew how much she made him happy. Everything that he did for her made him happy.

_Is there anything I can get for you for a real present? Surely, there’s something that you want?_

He glanced at the picture, pushed the thought away. He couldn’t let Hux be right about this, it seemed disloyal to think of her that way when she was...well she wasn’t thinking of him that way, that much for certain. She was his friend. His closest and only friend. He had nothing at all beyond that to offer her, had no right to think the thoughts that were creeping at the edge of his mind.

_I take personal exception to the prison’s rule against me sending you food. First no Halloween candy, and now no birthday cupcakes? It’s cruel, evil, inhumane._

_Unfortunately, due to this, I was forced to eat your cupcake for you. I’m sure you understand that I could not allow it to go to waste!_

He shook his head, a laugh bubbling up from deep down inside that helped push his worries out of his mind. She loved food almost as much as she hated math. He would have given her a hundred cupcakes, a thousand, one every day of her life if it kept that smile on her face.

_I’m sorry I only have time for a short letter today. I’ll write more soon, and I may have some exciting stories to tell when I do because I am going to a party with Rose and Finn! A real party, for the first time ever! Ok, maybe not too real, it’s just some friends from class getting together but I’ve never done anything like this before._

_Is it silly to be so excited about this? Probably. Do I care? Absolutely not!_

_I promise I’ll tell you all about it in my next letter!_

_Rey_

But the next letter didn’t come.

***

He didn’t get worried when the first few days passed, but by the end of the first week he’d grown concerned. By the end of the second week he was terrified.

Hux avoided him as much as possible, giving him space to sit broodingly on his bunk and glare at the picture of her on his wall.

The letters he sent her weren’t being returned to him, so she must have kept them, but he couldn’t figure out why she wasn’t answering them. His biggest fear, though he knew he had no right to it, was that she had abandoned him, moved on at the request of her friends or her father or some boyfriend she hadn’t told him about.

When the next letter finally did come, he wished the explanation had been that simple. That the cause of it had been something to cause him pain, rather than her.

He’d sagged in relief when it came but his joy turned to despair when he recognized the tears stains that marked the words.

What could have happened, what could he have done, to cause her such pain? His stomach twisted, and he swallowed down the bile that crawled up his throat, as he forced himself to read, to try and make sense of what she was saying.

_Kylo,_

_I’m sorry, so sorry, that I haven’t written. I read your letters, and I know you’ve been worried about me, but I didn’t know how to explain._

_Something happened, something bad, at the party that night._

_There were more people there than we expected, and some of them were drinking. We thought that maybe we should go home, you know? Rose wanted to go home, but I wanted to stay, just for a little while, because I’d never been to a party before._

_I wasn’t drinking, I don’t drink, I was just talking to some of my friends from class, but…_

He squinted trying to make out the next few lines, tears had fallen heavily there, and it was hard to read what she had written.

_…I went to the bathroom and when I came out my friends were gone and there were some guys from school there that I had never met before. They said, well it doesn’t matter exactly what they said…_

He knew exactly the kind of bullshit they had said and if he wasn’t already in prison, he would have landed himself in prison for using his fists to teach every single one of them how to watch their fucking mouths around her.

_… but it was awful. They were pulling on my clothes and laughing. I told them no, but they didn’t listen, and I just wanted to leave. I wanted to find Rose and Finn and go home, but they wouldn’t let me. They were blocking my way out of the room and I was so scared of what they might do to me._

They needed more than their mouths fixed and his blood bubbled with the urge. He looked around, momentarily blind to his surroundings, chest heaving with fury and the need to _do_ something. It took a moment for him to realize how trapped he was, how helpless. He was no good to her in here, couldn’t even protect her when shit like this happened.

He pushed a hand into his hair, growling as he read the rest, his fury rising with each word.

_I hit one of them, it probably didn’t even hurt him, but it they weren’t expecting it and I ran out of the room to get away. I found my friends and told them I was ready to leave, but I couldn’t tell them what happened. I was just so embarrassed._

_Rose wanted to leave, and I asked to stay, and I can’t believe I’m so stupid, this is all my fault._

_I couldn’t talk to them, and I didn’t want to tell my dad because he’d probably never let me leave the house again, but I just couldn’t keep it bottled up inside and I ended up telling Poe. Some of it at least, not all of it because I knew he’d tell my dad, and it didn’t go well._

_I haven’t told you about Poe and I’m sorry about that, but we’ve been on a few dates. He’s going to be a pastor and I’m a pastor’s daughter and it just all seemed so perfect on the surface. I thought that maybe someday he might have wanted to marry me but now… maybe he won’t want to because of this._

_He asked me what I wore to the party and then said that maybe it had been a bad idea for me to go wearing that dress. That maybe I should have worn a sweater over it, or a longer skirt. He said, “Sometimes we have to try harder not to cause someone else to stumble."_ _I don’t know how I can help him run a church if I’m leading others into sin and it causes them to do such horrible things._

_I mean, he might not have wanted to marry me anyway because of everything with school and my career, he thought that it would be a good idea for me to be a teacher, but I thought I might have had enough time to convince him that there is still so much good I could do for the church even though I changed majors. I thought I could convince him that I could still be a good wife. This is not going to help with that. I feel like he looks at me differently now, and I hate it._

_I’m so mad at everyone right now, but especially myself._

_I thought at first that I was never going to be able to talk to anyone else about it, because I couldn’t handle anyone else looking at me the way that Poe did. It was so lonely, and I was having such frightening nightmares, but then I realized that of all the people in my life, you were the one person that I could say anything to and you’d never judge me._

_I have you, just you._

_I don’t know what I need you to do, just please don’t let me be alone in this. Please tell me it’s going to be alright._

_Rey_

Kylo buried his face in his hands, rage coiled uselessly in every muscle of his body. He wanted to hurt someone, to rip and tear at them and make them bleed for what they’d done to her. She’d been so innocent, so full of light, and now the world had put its disgusting fingerprints on her, and she blamed herself.

Hux walked into the cell, his brows lifting as he saw the paper in Kylo’s hands. “You finally get a letter? I thought for sure she’d finally gotten smart…” He trailed off at the snarl of rage on Kylo’s face. “What the hell? What happened? Did she get married and break up with you?”

Kylo’s teeth were clenched, his fist tightening and untightening reflexively.

“That son of a bitch made her feel like it was her fault.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not 'leading others to stumble' is something that I have seen used as a way to encourage women to dress more modestly and it has always bothered me. I have even seen it used when giving out dress codes for children and I feel like the message being sent is that the victim is to blame for inciting lust if something happens.


	10. Would You Like To?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Promise me, O women of Jerusalem, by the gazelles and wild deer  
> Not to awaken love until the time is right- Song of Solomon 2:7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just need to say thank you very much to all of you that have commented on this fic with your stories of how it has spoken to you or reminded you of your past experiences. It has been so amazing to read and I appreciate all of you! I will get caught up on comments tonight/tomorrow so please know that if I have not responded to you yet that I will soon!
> 
> I've also increased the chapter count but only by a little. We'll see if I can stick to that or not, but I have issues with chapter counts, so don't get too attached to that number.
> 
> I don't think that there are any specific TW for this chapter, but if you feel that I have missed something please let me know!

She carried his letter in her purse for the first few weeks after it came, so it stayed with her everywhere she went, and when the guilt and the shame started to creep in, she pulled it out and read it again.

The paper was soft now, and the words faded, but it didn’t matter because she knew them all. She’d memorized the exact phrases that had been most comforting and where she could find them on the page.

_Are you alright?_

He’d asked about her first, about how she was doing, how she was feeling. It made her feel warm and safe, to know she mattered to him more than some rule that she might have broken. He didn’t care if her judgment had lapsed or mistakes had been made, he only cared about her.

_This was not your fault._

He’d told her that so clearly, so emphatically, that the sick feeling in her chest had begun to abate for the first time since the party. He knew what had happened, the real ugly truth of it and not the glossed over version that she’d told Poe, and he didn’t blame her.

_I don’t know what’s going on with you and Poe, but I can’t believe that dumb fuck actually tried to blame you. I’d like to knock his teeth down his throat and blame him for not wearing a helmet. That’s such bullshit, Rey. I need you to know that it’s bullshit._

She had laughed out loud at that, pressing a trembling hand to her mouth as she giggled. Part of her felt a bit sorry for Poe, that he was the object of such violent fantasies, but she couldn’t feel too sorry. It wasn’t like Kylo could actually hurt him, and even if he could she felt reasonably confident that he wouldn’t. He just wanted her to know that he’d protect her, keep her safe, and he wanted to make her laugh, like he always did.

_Don’t ever let anyone make you feel like you’re to blame because something bad happened to you, especially not some self-righteous Bible thumping bastard. He doesn’t deserve you if he treats you that way._

_People that hide that hide their cruelty and their judgement behind a mask of piety are the worst kind of people, even more terrible than the ones that are openly evil, because you can’t protect yourself from them. You don’t see it coming until it’s too late, and even then, no one believes you._

_They hurt people, and then blame it on the people they hurt and it’s disgusting. You don’t deserve that life._

She’d thought over that, worried over what he meant, until she’d given in to the urge to ask him.

_Did someone hurt you that way? Did they blame you, too?_

She hadn’t expected an answer, it was such an intimate and personal thing to ask, even of a friend, but he had answered her anyway.

_Yes, someone hurt me and other people I loved and cared about very much. No one believed any of us._

It was a sad comfort to know that he’d experienced that same kind of hurt, and she wondered, not for the first time, what had happened to him that had led to him killing his father. She was so certain that there was pain there, that the spoiled brat the media had depicted was not who he had really been in those moments, but she didn’t want to press too hard.

She had written only

_I’m so sorry._

and

_I believe you._

and then, thinking of Mrs. Nu and Kaydel’s parents

_I know so many people of faith that have good hearts and love God, but I also know of people who pretend to have faith as an excuse to hurt others. I agree that it's the worst thing. You expect kindness and love, but they spew hatred and judgment. You deserved better than whatever happened to you._

She wasn’t sure why she’d done it, what impulse had overtaken over, but she had scrawled her phone number hastily on the bottom of the letter and put it the outgoing mail before she could change her mind.

And now she waited.

“You look jumpy,” Rose told her, sitting down beside her as the other members of the Bible group roamed around the room after their meeting, nibbling on snacks and talking about Rose’s plans for the Christmas toy drive.

“I guess I am,” Rey admitted with a smile. “I haven’t been feeling like myself the past few weeks.”

“You know you can have the group back any time. You didn’t have to turn the whole thing over to me.” Rose leaned into her, wrapping her arm around Rey’s waist and leaning her head companionably on Rey’s shoulder. 

“I know, but you’re doing an amazing job,” Rey told her, and she truly was. Rey enjoyed attending the meetings and seeing her friends, but her heart wasn’t in running it anymore, not since… “I just needed some time to think.”

Rose nodded, and though Rey couldn’t see her face she could hear the hesitant worry in her voice. “Have you told your dad about school yet? About changing your major?”

“Not yet, but I will soon. I know it bothers you, keeping my secrets.” Rey picked at a piece of lint on her skirt and smoothed it over her thigh. She hated keeping her own secrets, but she didn’t have the courage to tell him yet.

“I just worry,” Rose said. “You’re not acting like yourself and I know your dad is worried, too. You aren’t really talking to anyone and you haven’t been out with Poe at all. I think he’s starting to wonder if you’re still interested.”

“I think _I’m_ trying to figure out if I’m still interested,” Rey told her honestly, and Rose turned to look at her in surprise.

“Really? Did the dates not go well?”

Rey shrugged and shot her a small smile. “They went fine, I guess. He just…I don’t know. I think he was more interested in me for what he thought I could bring to the table than he was in me as a person. He wanted someone that would make a good pastor’s wife, and decided I fit the role. He wasn’t interested in finding out about who I am or what I want out of life.”

“Oh.”

Rose looked so disappointed that Rey smiled and bumped her shoulder teasingly. “I’m holding out for my Finn,” she told her. “Someone that wants to know all of me and cares about me for everything that I am, not what he wants me to be.”

That soothed the worry from Rose’s brow, and she smiled back dreamily. “I really did get lucky with Finn, didn’t I?”

“You truly did. And speaking of Finn, when’s Jannah coming back into town for a visit?”

“Christmas break. He’s excited to see her again.”

“Me, too. Summer feels like such a long time ago already.”

“Maybe you’ll feel better by Christmas,” Rose said hopefully.

“Maybe,” Rey muttered. Her eyes narrowed on Mrs. Nu as she made the rounds with her usual gossip. Heads were turning too often in their direction, and Rey had a gut feeling that they were the subject of the night’s discussions. “Is she giving you problems?” Rey asked, jerking her chin toward Mrs. Nu.

Rose turned to look and sighed. “No more so than usual. She’s claiming that you're incompetent and sinful, and that I'm incompetent and useless because you’re the one that gave me the job.”

“Bitch,” Rey mumbled beneath her breath, and her cheeks flamed with embarrassment when Rose drew in a shocked breath and looked at her in horror.

“Rey,” she hissed. “You can’t say that in here! What’s…How did…Where did you even pick up a cursing habit?”

Rey shrugged. “Probably Kylo,” she admitted. “He curses a lot in his letters.”

“You’re supposed to be encouraging him with your good habits, not picking up his sinful ones." Rose clucked her tongue and looked at Rey suspiciously. "How often are you still writing him, anyway? You haven’t mentioned him in a while.”

“A few times a week.”

“Seriously? That’s a lot. Are you sure that Kylo isn’t the reason you’ve been so distracted lately? I’d hate to see you blow things with Poe over some guy that you’re never even going to get to see, and who is probably just as dangerous as he said he was in the beginning.”

“He isn’t,” Rey said confidently, “but we’re just friends anyway.”

Rose’s look was skeptical, but she let the subject drop.

***

It took a few back and forth letters before he called her for the first time.

There was much more to do when setting up phone calls with an inmate than she had anticipated. It wasn’t as simple as just picking up the phone and dialing her number.

In his first letter after she had sent him her phone number, he had explained that she would need to go to a website and register her number with the Department of Corrections before he could call.

Then, he had to put money in his telephone account- which he’d never had to do before since he had no else to call- after they discovered her cell phone wouldn’t let her accept collect calls. Only landlines could receive collect calls and her house didn’t have a landline. In fact, she didn’t know anyone whose house still had a landline, and she was frustrated immensely by the inefficient system long before they had worked out all the problems.

He made the whole process worse by asking her in every letter if she was even certain that she wanted him to call her, which only added to her overall feeling of irritation and impatience. She had committed to this and given him her phone number and she just wanted him to hurry up with it.

The waiting was interminable.

In the end, he told her what day he would call and that while he couldn’t give her an exact time- inmates couldn’t use the phones during lockdowns or emergencies- that he could only call between eight o’clock in the morning and eleven o’clock at night. That was such a broad window of time that she skipped her classes that day, pretending a stomachache that she didn’t have so she could sit beside her phone nibbling at her fingernails until it rang. She couldn’t miss his call after all of the effort they had put into setting it up.

He didn’t keep her waiting her long, and her phone screen lit up, displaying an unfamiliar number, at 10:17 that morning.

She swallowed hard, and her hands shook as she answered it. “Hello?” There was a brief silence so loud she could hear the blood rushing in her ears. Her body felt weightless and numb and her fingertips cold. Her breath was shallow and uneven as she waited for him to answer.

“Hi, is this…is this Rey?”

Everything inside of her slid sideways at the sound of his voice. The images that she had of him in her mind, the ones that she had carried since she had looked up his trial, shattered. He had been a kid, long and lanky and awkward- younger than her and fragile for all the brutality of his crime. That was how she had pictured him in her mind when she wrote to him, when she read his letters, when she thought of him and how he spent his days.

This… this was not the voice of a child, and the deep rumbling timbre of her name on his lips shook her to her core. He had said he turned twenty-eight on his birthday, and she hadn’t paid much attention, but now it was so painfully obvious that he was a grown man nearing thirty.

She pressed her thighs together against an unfamiliar sensation and cleared her throat.

“Yes, it is. It’s nice to hear your voice finally. I feel like I already know you so well.”

He chuckled and she bit down hard on her lip, terrified that he could hear the way her breath trembled on the exhale.

“I feel the same way. I’m not interrupting your classes, am I?”

“I stayed home today. Tummy ache.”

“Rey…” His voice dropped, got impossibly lower and she stifled something that felt suspiciously like a whimper. It would have been so embarrassing for him to have heard her make that noise. She bit her lip, hard, and tried to focus. This was her friend, and it was obvious he didn’t approve of her skipping classes for his sake.

She knew how much he valued her education, but she was adamant.

“Kylo,” she said firmly. “I’m not going to skip class every time you call me, but this time was important, and I didn’t have a specific time to expect your call. I’ll send you my class schedule, so you’ll know when I’m free for next time.”

“You’re not going to skip…you mean you want me to call you again?”

She blinked at his stupidity and scowled at the walls full of his artwork. “Of course, I do. Do you _not_ want to call me again?”

“No, I do,” he said, rushing to reassure her. “It’s just…well it’s not like anyone else wants to talk to me.” His voice was suddenly sad, laced with years of rejection that hurt her fundamentally on his behalf.

“I’m hurt that you could think so little of me,” she said, careful to keep her tone neutral. She spoke over the stuttered start to his apology to continue with a smile, “Just because of that I’m going to eat your birthday cupcake next year, too.”

He exhaled softly, and she could sense the tension as it flowed out of him. “That _is_ cruel and unusual punishment.”

“It really is, but you know you deserve it. Is it expensive?” she asked, changing the subject abruptly.

“The cupcake?”

She sighed. “No… calling me? It is expensive?”

“Maybe, but it doesn’t really matter. I get a monthly deposit into my general account, the one thing my mother does for me. It pays for stuff from the commissary and whatever I need, but I can spend it on phone calls if I want to.”

“Hmmm. How often are you allowed to call?”

“I get twenty minutes per call, but for a max of 300 minutes a month.”

“I hate math,” she reminded him in a playful whine, hoping he’d take pity in her.

“That’s…uh, about twice a week.”

“You did that in your head,” she pouted. “You’re a shameless show off. But that’s good. I think I’d like to hear your voice twice a week.”

“I’d like to hear yours but…What about Poe? Or your dad?”

“What about them?”

“Will they be mad? About me calling you? You said you might want to marry that guy.”

“I’m not going to tell my dad...and I'm not going to marry Poe,” she said quickly, having decided right that moment that she absolutely wasn’t going to.

“You aren’t?” he sounded…surprised maybe, or relieved. She wished she could see his face, the look in his eyes, so she could know for sure. “Why not?”

She huffed out an impatient breath. “He just…he just doesn’t make me _feel_. I don’t think I make him feel, either. That’s important, don’t you think so? For when you marry someone?”

“Yeah, yeah I think it’s important. You should love them.”

“Yes, definitely. But you should feel…other stuff, too. Intimate stuff?”

He paused and she was afraid she’d said the wrong thing, made him angry maybe, but then... “You mean, should you want to fuck the person you marry? Because if that’s what you mean then yeah, you really should want to do that.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

“You don’t, um, you don’t want to fuck Poe?”

She shook her head before she remembered that he couldn’t see her. “No. I don’t think I do. He’s pretty to look at but…”

“But he doesn’t turn you on.”

She chewed a thumbnail absently as she considered it. “No? I don’t think I’ve ever really been turned on, so I’m not sure.”

He made a strangled noise on the other end of the line and coughed quickly to cover it up.

She sat up in alarm. “Kylo, are you ok?" 

He made another soft noise, one she interpreted to mean that he was fine, and she flopped back down on the bed, shaking her head at him.

"I’m sorry, I don’t know why I’m telling you this. It’s just that no one ever really wanted to date me before, so I don’t know what I’m doing at all. I just needed someone who wouldn’t think I was making a big mistake by not marrying him.”

“Well, I don’t think that, so I guess you have me, don’t you?”

“And you have me,” she promised. “For whatever you need.” She glanced at the clock on her phone. Not much time left for today.

“I’ll send you my schedule,” she reminded him. “But maybe you could call Saturday or Sunday next time? No classes that day.”

“Yeah, sure. You’ve got church Sunday morning, right?”

“Yes, so Saturday? Or Sunday afternoon.”

“I’ll call Saturday.”

“Promise?”

“Yes, I promise.” She could tell he was smiling, but she didn’t mind it if he thought she was funny. She liked to make him smile.

“Kylo?”

“Hmm?”

“I know you probably can’t but…is there any way you can take pictures? Of you, I mean? I’d like to know what you look like these days.”

“I can have some taken. It’s not unusual for friends and family to want pictures, but I’ll only send them to you on one condition.”

She frowned and sat up straighter on the bed, prepared to fight him for that photo. “What’s the condition?”

“You send me another one of you.”

She relaxed back against the pillows with a smile. “Oh, I can do _that_.”

***

He kept his promise, calling her Saturday afternoon as she was working on her math homework. She had declared him a perfect and welcome distraction just so she could hear him laugh again, and he spent the whole twenty minutes complaining that he hadn't gotten her picture yet and accusing her playfully of having not mailed it.

Her picture from him came the following week and she studied it carefully before tucking it out of sight in her bedside drawer, away from the prying eyes of any visitors.

He was nothing at all like she thought he’d be- the man in the photo was older and far more attractive than anything in her imagination. The skinny teen she’d seen in the videos had filled out into a large man that had grown into big his ears and his prominent nose. His skin was still pale, and his hair was still black, now curling softly down to the collar of a white prison jumpsuit.

He looked awkward, unsure of himself, and she knew this was the first time in an awfully long time that anyone had cared enough to ask him what he looked like. His own mother didn’t know what her son looked like as man.

Rey couldn’t stop thinking about it.

She nibbled her lip, trying to concentrate on her homework at the dining room table, but her she had reread the same page three times, unable to keep her traitorous thoughts from drifting to inconsequential nonsense things- like how big Kylo’s hands were, or the thickness of his neck and thighs, or the plump pink pout of his lips.

“Hey.”

She jumped guiltily at the sound of Poe’s voice and pasted a bright smile on her face as she turned to face him. He was still handsome, but her pulse remained steady as she looked at him.

“Hey, haven’t seen you at the house for a while.”

He sat down in the chair beside her and picked up her math book to examine the cover. “Yeah, well, things seemed a little awkward between us. I thought maybe, you know, that you might like some space.”

“That was very kind of you.”

“You seemed upset,” he said, pushing gently for an explanation that she wasn’t certain she wanted to give, “like maybe you were angry at me.”

“I was,” she admitted bluntly. It wouldn’t do her any good to pretend otherwise.

“Why?” He looked genuinely shocked.

“You blamed me for something that wasn’t my fault. It shouldn’t have mattered what I was wearing when those boys harassed me. That’s not an excuse for men to behave badly, Poe. Their sin was their own…and your answer was bullshit.”

He leaned back, frowning at her uncharacteristically combative tone and vulgar language. “Look, what I said…”

“Was wrong.” She leaned over and took her book from his hands, returning it to the pile.

He bristled defensively. “You know, Rose told me about that guy you’ve been writing to. That prisoner who’s in jail for life, for murder. She’s worried about you, thinks that he’s been a bad influence. Maybe she was right. I didn’t want to have to go to your father, but you aren’t acting like yourself.”

“Please, do tell my father. I’m sure he’ll think it’s a fascinating story since he’s been well aware of my participation in that particular church program since we started it.” It wasn't exactly true, he had no idea how much Kylo had come to mean to her or how often she communicated with him, but she wasn't going to tell Poe that.

"I'm glad. It seems dangerous."

She made no attempt to conceal her animosity as she gathered her things. “I appreciate the concern you and Rose have for my well-being, however, My communication with Kylo has had no influence on me whatsoever. I’m acting exactly like myself. You’d know that if you’d actually bothered to get to know me. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m expecting a phone call.”

She swept from the room without a backward glance, but her teeth were still clenched with rage when she answered Kylo on the first ring, blurting out the whole confrontation in terse words and short phrases as he listened quietly.

“Want me to knock his teeth down his throat?" he asked when she had finished.

She sank onto the bed and chuckled weakly. “Maybe? How dare Rose tell Poe? This is none of his business!”

“She’s worried about you. Maybe she thinks I’m trying to take his girl.”

There was a beat of awkward silence as they both realized what he had said.

A sudden impulse came over her, and she plunged ahead recklessly. “Are you? I mean, would you like to?”

“What?”

She cleared her throat nervously. “I just thought that…uh…it would be kind of nice if…”

His voice on the other end of the line sounded strangled. “Damn it, we’re almost out of time. Can you just…can you just write it out and send it to me? Just explain what you want in your next letter and mail it me. I won’t call you back until I get it. We need to be on the same page about what we’re talking about here.”

“Okay, I can do that.”

“Promise?”

“I promise.”


	11. I Want You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He calls me beautiful one- Song of Solomon 2:10

“You look tired.”

“Hmm? Oh, yeah, sorry.” Rey shot her father a quick smile, but she couldn’t deny that it was probably tired around the edges. It had been two days since she had talked to Kylo and she had barely slept at all. “Is it alright if I go ahead and head up to bed? I’m not feeling well.”

It would have been impossible to miss the concern, or the way his eyes traveled over her, looking for an explanation for her odd behavior lately. It caused a pang in her heart, the secrets she was keeping from him, but she knew he would only worry more if she told him now, before she had the words to explain it all.

“I don’t mind. Get some rest, I’ll make you pancakes in the morning.”

“You make the best pancakes.” She lingered over the hug she gave him, misty eyed with exhaustion and uncertainty about her future. He had always loved her, but she knew his reaction to the things she would eventually have to tell him was uncertain. Much like Rose, he wanted what was best for her, and she was longer sure that his opinion matched her own about that was.

She had made her choice about her education, her future career, and that would be shocking enough, but now she was on the precipice of another choice, one that had the potential to turn her life in a very different direction than any they could have planned for.

There were crumpled papers crunched under feet as she walked across her bedroom, failed drafts of the most important words she’d ever tried to say. Kylo was waiting, and she had never felt more uncertain of herself.

She had spent every free minute writing and rewriting the letter that he had asked for, but she couldn’t find the words to explain what had motivated her impulsive invitation, nor could she find the will to take it back.

The image of him in her mind had shifted from a lost and hostile boy, one who was damaged and broken and needed her help, to a man that had given her hope and comfort in her darkest hour of self-doubt.

There was a connection between them, a hot and bright line that bound her to him now in ways that she knew she would never be able to explain to anyone else. It had begun as a friendship that was deep and pure.

She wasn’t sure what it had now become, or how they could possibly navigate it when he was going to spend the rest of his life in prison. All she knew for certain was that she had stared at the picture he had sent her until she had memorized every detail of his face. She knew the exact location of every freckle and the precise shade of his eyes, could have drawn in her sleep the angle of the slope of his lips.

If he had been able, she would have wanted him to press those lips to her own, to discover the warmth and the taste of him. She would not be frightened with him, as she had been with the boys at the party, not did she think that she think that she would find the experience as dull and tedious as kissing Poe had become after that first incident in his car.

She would be safer with Kylo than she had ever been with anyone, that was true, but he knew her deeply, all of her faults and her flaws, and he still wanted to know her more. It was a stark contrast to Poe’s superficial interest, a distinction that she was finally able to recognize and appreciate for what it was. Poe cared about her impact on his image and Kylo cared about her as a person.

It was easy to fantasize that his interest would carry him to wanting to know her more intimately, that his kisses would not be polite requirements but demonstrations of passion.

But did he really want that? Did he feel that way about outside of her burgeoning fantasies? And was it fair, considering his circumstances, for her to ask him to?

He’d never said anything to her, never even really hinted that his feelings went any further than friendship. If she poured her heart out to him, if she told him how she truly felt, he might reject her. He might push her away. It was possible he wasn’t attracted to her, or that he didn’t want to set them both up for was sure to be an inevitable heartbreak, knowing that they could never really be together.

If he had been any less stunned, any less suddenly attentive during that last phone call, she would have lost her nerve already. But the way he had reacted, that brief shock and the sudden breathlessness in his tone, had given her hope. Not happily ever after hopes, because that would take kind of miracle, but hope for living in the moment, for taking the best of what they could have while they could have it.

Maybe, even for him, what little it was possible for them to have might be better than nothing at all.

She reached into her beside drawer for a pen and paper, determined to finish this and let him be the one to decide how much he was willing to risk, but let it drop when her phone rang. Her brief hope that maybe he had changed his mind about calling died away when she saw another familiar name on the screen. She silenced the call with a swipe of her thumb and turned her back on the caller.

There was no way that she could stay mad at Rose forever for telling Poe about Kylo, but she couldn’t devote the mental and emotional energy to dealing with her friend until she had figured out what to say to the man that had caused this rift between them..

The bed creaked under her as she flopped down on her stomach, pen and paper in hand. She had been trying to write this letter using her head, and that would never work because what she felt for him wasn’t rational. It never had been. It was born from a deeper connection, the broken pieces of lost souls that found unexpectedly that their shattered edges fit together exactly right.

He had told her to follow her heart, and there was nothing left for her to do.

***

“Are you going to open it?”

“Yeah.”

“Sometime today?”

Kylo looked at Hux, sitting on the side of his own bunk, watching. The retort died on his lips. He had been sitting here staring at the envelope for at least five minutes, so the question wasn’t entirely unreasonable. “Probably… Maybe.” He winced, rolling his shoulder in an uncertain shrug. “I don’t know.”

Hux shook his head and leaned back against his own pillow. “The answer is going to be the same no matter when you open it. You might as well stop being such a coward and get it over with.”

“Yeah. Maybe I just…won’t open it. That would be the right thing for me to do.” Kylo tapped the envelope against his thigh, weighing his own desires against the damage that it would cause to Rey’s life. She deserved more than the shadow of a meaningful relationship.

“That’s really fucking stupid, you that right? What if she wants to be with you?”

“How? How is she going to be with me when I’m stuck in here? Either she doesn’t want to be with me, which is going to be the worst fucking thing for me.... Or she does want to be with me, which would be the worst fucking thing for her. Because then what? I can’t marry her. I can’t give her a family. She’d be wasting her fucking life.”

Hux sighed and the look on his face was so plainly condescending that it made Kylo’s fists clench. “Yeah. That’s her decision though, isn’t it?”

“If I was decent man, I would throw that letter in the trash, and never write to her again.”

“Good thing you aren’t a decent man. You’re a murderer and a prisoner, _for once_ use it to your advantage and open the damn letter.”

Kylo’s fingers shook as he tore the paper, and he swallowed hard against the urge to run away from facing what she had to say, convinced that it would kill him, no matter what she had decided.

_Kylo,_

_These are the hardest words that I have ever needed to say. I’ve started over more times in the last two days than I can count, searching for the perfect way to tell you how I feel about you and all of this._

Dread settled in the pit of stomach like a stone, and he was suddenly numb and cold. She was going to do the right thing, and free herself from him before he could ruin her life. He was so happy for her, but the pain was already spreading through him. The loss of one more thing that he cared about, and it might just be more than he could bear.

_I know what I said to you on the phone two days ago wasn’t fair._

_You’ve never acted like you wanted to be anything more than my friend, and I put you in an uncomfortable position by asking you for more so suddenly. I realize now that I might have caused you to feel that you could jeopardize our friendship by telling me that you don’t think of me as anything more than that._

_This was especially unkind of me, because you have come to depend on me to be your only connection to the outside world, and I don’t want you to be concerned that I would take that from you._

He huffed indignantly. She thought he might feel taken advantage of and she was worried about him. Was she afraid that he didn’t want her, but he’d feel obligated to pretend otherwise? He wanted to pick her up and hold her, to kiss her until she knew that nothing she wanted could ever feel like an obligation to him. Not with the way he felt about her. 

Some of his hope returned, fragile like the wings of a butterfly in his chest.

_Our friendship is one of the most important things in my life. That will be true no matter what you have to say to me after reading this letter. I mean that, and I hope that we can be honest with each other about our feelings, even if you don’t feel the same way that I do, because I need to be honest with you about something._

_I lied to you._

_On the phone, the last time we spoke, I told you that I wasn’t sure about my relationship with Poe, because I had never been turned on by anyone before but that isn’t true._

_I’ve been turned on by you._

Hux chuckled at the choked sound he made and Kylo glared at him before turning his attention back to the page.

_I feel something when I hear your voice, when I see your face in the picture that you sent me, when I read the words that you have written to me over all these weeks. Friendship, yes, but it’s more than that. It’s a heat beneath my skin, a fluttering in my stomach, an ache in my body that I’ve never felt for anyone else and I needed you to know._

Heat courses through his own blood, a simmering desire that had building for months that he had been trying so hard to deny. He reread her words again, sure that he must have misunderstood, but their meaning didn’t change.

He glanced at Hux, suddenly uncomfortable that he was so close and watching with such interest. Sharing such a small space was hard enough when it had been his vulnerable emotions on display, but it was worse somehow when Rey was talking to him about this. She was inexperienced and must have felt so exposed to speak to him so openly. Hux’s presence felt like a violation of her privacy, even if he couldn’t see her words.

He hadn’t expected her to tell him this.

If there had been any hope at all in him, it would have been that Rey felt some kind of emotional connection to him, the idea that she might feel something sexual for him simply had not occurred to him. She had never even seen him in person.

Her pictures on the wall mocked him, a potent reminder that lust was perfectly able to flourish from something as simple as a photo and a phone call. He would never forget the way he had felt when she’d answered the phone for the first time. Hearing her sweet lilting voice had been one of the best experiences of his life.

He’d been ashamed of it, had felt like a creep for the way he’d felt about her, but if she had felt the same way…

_I needed you to know that no matter how you feel about me, I have strong feelings for you. Feelings that are a mixed-up combination of friendship and desire that I don’t quite understand but I’m willing, if you are, to try and figure it out. I’d like to take what joy we can from it, even cannot be together as I would like for us to be._

_Because I would like for us to be together. It has become only the walls of your prison and my uncertainty about your feelings that keep me from you. If it were possible, I would ask you to hold me, maybe even to kiss me if you were willing. I want nothing more than to sleep in your arms and wake to your face being the first thing I see in the morning light. _

_There is nothing that we can do about the walls that separate us, but they are not enough to stop my feelings for you. Our friendship is strong, and our relationship could be stronger, if you want me?_

_Rey_

“If I was a decent man…” But the letter was clutched protectively in his hand. He didn’t know how to let her go.

“You’re not,” Hux reminded him. “And she doesn’t want you to be. Seems like she had one of those and decided she liked you better. So, whatever she said to you, say it back. Then ask her to send nudes.”

Kylo glared at him. “You know the guards would confiscate that shit, besides she’s not like that.”

Hux snorted. “Women in love do crazy things.”

Kylo’s heart, already beating impossibly fast, somehow beat faster. “She’s not in love with me.”

“Isn’t she?” Hux’s question was dripping with doubt, and Kylo looked down at Rey’s letter again. That small flutter of hope grew stronger. He was a selfish man, but he wanted that from her.

“She didn’t say that she was,” he clarified carefully.

“Did you? Because we both know that you are.” Hux didn’t wait for an answer because he knew Kylo wouldn’t give him one. “It doesn’t matter if she said it, you know it’s true.”

***

She was too happy to be angry anymore. Her most recent phone call with Kylo had pasted a smile on her face that didn’t dissipate when Rose pulled out a chair and sat down beside her in the library.

“You’ve been avoiding me.”

Rey nodded. “I have. I’d say that I was sorry, but it would be a lie. You told Poe about Kylo, and you did it without talking to me about it.”

Rose winced, but she didn’t deny it. “I thought I was helping you. This thing with Kylo…” she drifted off, and her brows drew together in disapproval. “I’m worried.”

“I know, which is why I’m not avoiding you anymore. I know you meant well.”

Rose relaxed, a soft sigh escaping her as she reached into her bag. She pulled out a bar of chocolate and split it between them. “Does this mean that you’ve worked things out with Poe?” she asked.

“No,” Rey said with a laugh. Several of the other students turned to glare at her, but she ignored them. “It means I’ve forgiven you because I don’t care at all what Poe thinks anymore. I’m with Kylo.”

 _“What?”_ Rose stilled, the hand holding her chocolate paused halfway to her mouth.

Rey nodded, chewing quickly as the librarian shot her a disapproving look.

“You can’t be with Kylo.” Rose leaned to forward, whispering conspiratorially. “He’s… well, he’s…you know?”

“He’s in prison?” Rey asked, not bothering to keep her voice down. She didn’t care if people knew. “Yes, he is.”

“He’s a murderer,” Rose hissed. “Have you lost your mind? You had a good man, Rey.”

“Poe didn’t love me. I’m not even sure he liked me, really. But I know Kylo likes me and I think someday he might even love me.”

“Did he say that?”

The memory of his phone call flashed through her mind, how he hadn’t even bothered to say hello when she answered.

“I want you,” he’d said breathlessly. “I want you _so much_ and I didn’t know how to tell you and I was so afraid that you wouldn’t feel the same. You have a whole life ahead of you and I shouldn’t mess that up, but I can’t help it. I know its selfish of me, but I want whatever you have, whatever you’re willing to give to me.”

His words echoed in her mind and she smiled at Rose, her heart full and happier than she could ever remember being. “He didn’t say exactly that, not yet, but I haven’t either. Maybe I should,” she mused.

The look of horror on Rose’s face was almost comical. “No, please, don’t do that. God, Rey, does your dad know about all of this? I just can’t see him being what’s happening between you two. It’s not right for you to waste your life on someone who can’t give you anything in return.”

“I haven’t told him yet, but I will soon. I think that we’re going to have to a long talk over Christmas break- about school, and the Bible group, and Kylo. And you’re wrong about Kylo not giving me anything. He’s given me _everything_. Support, encouragement, unconditional friendship. He’s made me confident and brave and determined. Through him, it’s become truly clear to me that God has called me in a different way than we all expected.”

“You still think God called you to Kylo?”

“Yeah, I really do.”

Rose sighed, clearly defeated. “You know if you tell everyone…”

“It will be a huge scandal. I expect it to be, but I’m going to tell my dad over Christmas break and then after that, it won’t be a secret anymore. I’m not ashamed of him.” Her gaze was steady, she’d already made up her mind about this.

“He can’t give you a family,” Rose told her, hitting the concern that lay closest to Rey’s heart. “You always wanted a family.”

“I have one. My dad, you, Finn, Kaydel…and I’ll have Kylo. It might not work out,” she admitted, laying her hand over Rose’s, “but I would never forgive myself if I didn’t try.”


	12. Would It Make You Happy?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How beautiful you are, my darling! Oh, how beautiful! Your eyes are doves- Song of Solomon 1:15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know everyone is anxious and waiting on that face to face meeting and I promise it is coming, but I think this will still be a good chapter for all of you anyway even though we aren't quite there yet. I am going to try to finish out the first act of the story this week, so that everyone can get a better idea of where the story is going because I know right now it feels really hopeless and angsty. 
> 
> CW for this chapter- masturbation and religious based angst/guilt

Hux didn’t comment on his increased masturbation habits, which Kylo was extremely grateful for. They each tried to give the other what little privacy they could, but there wasn’t much to be had and it mostly all came down to them pretending not to be aware of the other’s activities.

There were some things that they just didn’t acknowledge, that they had learned to ignore. These included one another’s bathroom habits and how often they each felt the need to take their sexual needs into their own hands. It was as much a reality of prison life as the terrible food and the inescapable smells.

For the three years that they had been trapped in this hell together, Hux had usually been the one with the more intense needs, but that had all changed now. Rey had gotten bolder now that she knew how interested he was in her.

She hadn’t sent nudes, and he knew her well enough to know that she’d already checked all the rules to find out what she was not allowed to send and she wouldn’t be willing to have something like that confiscated. The photos that she had sent him with the last letter, however, were…suggestive.

Her dress was cut a little lower, just hint the top curve of her breast peeking out from beneath the pretty pink lace. She was still smiling, but her lips were slightly parted, and her eyes were soft and welcoming.

He knew that look, the one that invited a man in, and he had never thought that the need it stirred in him could be so strong. He wanted her- to pin her beneath him and hear the throaty little moans that he could drag from her lips and to feel her heat wrapped around him.

His hand was a poor substitute for her body, and he grit his teeth against the futility of the fantasy that drove him as he pumped himself into his fist with the image of her in his mind. She wanted him, she’d told him so, and if he could ever have gotten the hell out of here, she would have let him touch her and do all the things to her that he thought of doing when he was alone with nothing but his fantasies and his own rough stroking. He could have tasted her, felt her curves under his hands and her legs around his waist, whispered in her ear everything that he wanted to do her and everything that she made him feel.

He tightened his grip, his mind running over with possibilities and his heart beating a fast rhythm that perfectly matched the punishing pace he set as his hand slid up his length and back down again. He tried to be quiet, but when he was this close it was hard to keep his breathing even and avoid making the sounds that were trapped behind his lips. Sounds he had to keep quiet now, but that he wanted to give to her.

She would have known, then, how special she was, how much he wanted her, how much he loved her. Even hadn’t found a way to tell her with his words, he could have told her with his body.

Maybe she would have even said it back.

That was the thought that drove him over the edge, that had his muscles tightening and ecstasy shooting across his mind like the streaks of light behind his eyes as his mind went blank and hot and sticky ropes of come splattered over his hand and up the bare skin of his stomach.

He laid on his bunk after he had cleaned himself and the mess he had made and wondered if she ever thought about him like this. It was hard for him to ask her, when their calls were monitored, and all of their letters were read.

He didn’t want to embarrass her, knew that women that were raised as conservatively as she was were often hesitant to talk openly about sex. She might not even know that she could bring pleasure to her own body.

If she didn’t, he wished he could be the one to teach her.

***

“Merry Christmas!”

Rey laughed at the bright twinkling Christmas lights on the necklace that Jannah wore and gave her a welcoming hug. “Merry Christmas! Rose said you’d be coming back for the break, but I didn’t think I’d see you at the Bible group meeting.”

“I’m just here to drop off Rose, she was hanging out with me and Finn today, doing some Christmas shopping.”

“Enjoying your visit so far?”

“Yeah, I’ve missed Finn, but don’t tell him that. His ego is big enough as it is since he started dating Rose. He seems to think that just because she loves him, that I have to.”

“You _do_ love him,” Rey said with another laugh.

“But he’s my brother, so I’ll never admit it.”

Rey shook her head, once again perplexed by the relationships that siblings had with each other. “So, what’s changed since the last time I saw you? Anything interesting happening in Colorado?”

“Not much. Finished off a semester and lived through finals.” Rey groaned in sympathy and Jannah laughed. “It’s not too bad. I’ve decided to change my focus to social work, which keeps things interesting for me.”

“I still have two more exams this week before my break starts. I’m still stuck trying to get my general education credits out of the way, but I hope it gets better once I get to the classes that actually focus on my major,” Rey explained. “The one class that I had where we focused on that had a semester paper instead of an exam and I ended up with an “A” on that.”

“Finn said you changed your major. Decided not to go with teaching, after all?”

Rey looked around, then leaned in and lowered her voice. “It’s still a bit of a secret, but I’m doing political science. I’m aiming for law school.”

Jannah whistled softly. “Good for you. I didn’t know you it in you.”

“Neither did I, but I’ve had a little help figuring that out.” She smiled then, trying to change the subject before Jannah could ask. She didn’t want to talk about Kylo here yet, not until she had told her father herself. “You didn’t do _anything_ fun this semester?”

“I picked up a boyfriend.”

“Oh?” Rey peaked around, looking for an unfamiliar face. “Did he come with you?”

Jannah shook her head, reaching across Rey to grab a sugar cookie off the table behind her. “No, he stayed in Colorado. He’s not quite ready to meet the family yet.”

Rey nodded understandingly and grabbed a cookie of her own, a fat little snowman with too much icing. “Well, I’m sure he misses you.”

“Not much for him to miss. I keep him busy enough.” Jannah grinned at her, pure mischief/ Rey felt like this was a joke that she should understand, but she was completely lost.

“You do?” she asked politely, hoping Jannah would explain without her being forced to reveal her ignorance.

Jannah looked at her curiously. “I thought Finn said you a boyfriend that was locked up? Are you two not…you know?”

“Shh, please, I’m trying to keep that whole Kylo thing a secret until I can explain it all to my dad over Christmas break. And I really _don’t_ know,” Rey admitted, looking around to make sure no one could hear them.

“Sexting? Phone sex? R rated letters?” Jannah whispered, leaning in so no one else could hear her, but she was clearly appalled when Rey didn’t seem familiar with any of those things.

“Uh, no? Do people really do that?”

“Definitely. I can’t believe you’re _not_ doing that. Is he not hot or what?”

“He’s attractive,” Rey said, but she was blushing profusely. She was also suddenly uncertain. It had only been a week since she and Kylo had officially become more than just friends, but what if he did expect her to do those things. Somehow that seemed harder than actually kissing him.

“The guards read all of our letters and record all of our phone calls. There could always be someone listening,” she muttered weakly.

“That sounds hot, Rey,” Jannah said bluntly.

Rey felt her eyes widen in surprise. That people might find it appealing for others to listen to them talk about sexual things was something that had never occurred to her before. Now that it had, it was an intriguing thought.

“If they want to listen to or read your sexy shit, let ‘em,” Jannah continued with a shrug, clearly unbothered by the thought.

The last bit carried in the small room, and Mrs. Nu glared at them. “Language, please, ladies.”

Jannah sneered, unrepentant and unashamed as she had always been with Mrs. Nu. “What’s got your panties in a twist, you cranky old bat?”

The older woman flounced away, obviously hellbent on tattling on Jannah, but Rose merely widened her eyes in mock surprise and claimed not have heard a word of the interaction. Mrs. Nu went to sulk in the corner and Jannah winked at Rose, who waved back from across the room.

She was busy talking to her sister, whose new marriage already begun to bless her with a growing family. Paige was just starting to show with her first pregnancy and was glowing radiantly as she talked animatedly to her little sister. The baby would be here by next spring, and Rey felt a quick tug of regret that she might never know that joy for herself.

Jannah watched her carefully, eyes too knowing. “Sometimes in life we have to make choices,” she said finally. “I don’t much about this Kylo guy, just that Rose and Finn are very worried about you, but I do know that you have always been levelheaded and smart, so if you’ve fallen in love with him, he must be pretty special.”

“I know they’re worried, and it’s just because they care about me so much, but he is really special,” Rey agreed, turning away from Paige to smile at Jannah as the nerves in her stomach settled. “And I’m ready to make those choices, even if everyone else thinks they’re the wrong ones. There’s more than one way to make a family. I could always look into adoption or being a foster mom. The rules aren’t so strict anymore about having to have a husband.”

Jannah nodded approvingly “You create the life you want, or as close as you can with the cards you’re dealt. And speaking of making the best of it, you should ask your man about that phone sex stuff. It’s good for long distance relationships.”

Rey could feel the heat in her cheeks, but she nodded anyway. She had no experience with relationships of any kind, but especially the special circumstances that she had found herself in with Kylo. She needed to take whatever help she could get. “Thanks, Jannah.”

“Anytime.”

***

The conversation lingered in the back of her mind as she waited for Kylo to call the next day. She didn’t have to tell him right now about her back up plans for eventual children- it would be years until she was done with college and had a career that was established enough for her to seriously contemplate a family.

But the other part of what Jannah had told her…

“Kylo?” she asked, interrupting him as he asked about her day.

“Yeah?”

“Have you had sex before? I know you were young but…”

“I’ve had sex before,” he interrupted, and she knew that was one of those mysterious things connected to what had happened to him that he would be reluctant to talk about.

“Do you…do you think it’s wrong for people who aren’t married to have sex?” she asked, pressing on cautiously. She wanted him to know that she wasn’t demanding answers about his past, but she didn’t want to drop the subject entirely.

There was a long pause, and she could almost feel the thoughts swirling inside his mind as he tried to figure out how to answer that question.

“I don’t think so,” he said finally. “Especially if they care about each other.”

“I care about you,” she told him huskily

“I care about you, too,” he said, but there was a note of hesitation there, just a hint of confusion. He obviously couldn’t see where she was going with this conversation and she was too shy to just announce suddenly that she thought she might want to try having a long-distance sexual relationship.

“You’re my boyfriend, right?” she asked instead.

“I think so,” he told her. “I don’t think we’ve used that word before, but I’d like to be.”

“If you were out here with me, would you want to have sex with me?”

“Of course, I would. I’d give anything for that, or just to be able to touch you or kiss you at all.” His voice relaxed a little, like he had decided that she was just asking for him to reaffirm that he wanted to be with her.

She grinned, feeling more confident and a bit mischievous.

“Kylo?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you know what phone sex is?”

There was a loud crash on the other end of the line, and she realized with a giggle that he had dropped the phone.

“Rey? Are you still there?” He sounded panicked and she couldn’t quite stifle another laugh.

“I’m still here, but you didn’t answer my question.”

“I know what that is.”

“I know you probably don’t have that kind of privacy and there is a real possibility that someone could be listening to us since the calls are monitored but…”

“You want to know if there’s some way that we could share some kind of sexual relationship?” He was clearly shocked, he that same slightly wild tone that she remembered from when she had asked him if he wanted to move in on Poe's girl.

“Yes, exactly. You said you wanted me, and I want you, too.” She could feel the heat of her blush from her chest to her hairline, but she wasn’t backing down now.

His voice dropped low, clearly trying not to be overheard as he whispered. “Have you ever touched yourself, sweetheart?”

She whimpered, pressing her thighs together as that honeyed voice flowed over her.

“No, I haven’t,” she admitted. “I was ashamed to because it’s supposed to be a sinful, but I don’t think I’d be ashamed of it with you. God brought us together, but we can’t be physically together like we should be so…”

“So, you think you get an exception?”

She could hear the amusement, but she set her lips stubbornly. “Maybe, or maybe I just want to have this between us. I’m trying out a rebellious streak, you know?”

“I’ve noticed, and I like it. It makes me so proud of you when you stand up for what you want.”

She swallowed and heat bloomed in her stomach. Why did that always happen when he talked to her like this? When he was proud of her and happy because of something she’d done?

“I want you,” she said quietly. “I want to do this with you, if you’ll tell me how.”

“Can you try touching yourself tonight? For me? Think of me when you do, and then write me a letter to tell me if you liked it. Would you like to do that?”

“Yes, think I’d like to try that. Would it make you happy if I did?”

“Everything you do makes me happy, but this? That would be incredible, baby.”

Rey felt like her bones had gone liquid. “I like it when you call me that. Can you do it more often?”

“Baby, I’ll call you any name you like.”

***

It was harder than she thought it would be.

Without his voice in her ear to encourage her, her mind drifted to the other voices she had heard in her life. They spoke firmly against sex outside of the marriage bed, and even touching oneself was frowned upon. It was a sin, on offense against God and her future husband.

But she wouldn’t have a future husband, she realized, and if she ever would have married someone, she would have wanted it to be Kylo. Since he clearly didn’t mind, that was one less thing for her to worry about as she settled herself down on her bed.

She’d never noticed how quiet her room was at night, or how clearly sounds traveled when you were trying to be sneaky. Her heart was beating so loud that she was afraid her father would hear it and come to investigate, to find out what was wrong with her.

When he didn’t appear, she tried to focus on her conversation with Kylo, on his hastily whispered instructions on what she should do with her hands. The idea of putting her fingers inside her was intimidating, but he had assured her that if she thought of something that excited her, that her body would be wet, and it wouldn’t hurt.

She tried to remember the exact sound of his voice when he told her what to do, how it had gotten deep and husky with desire for her, and when she found the place he had described for her, there was a slick wetness that eased the entrance of her finger inside.

It was strange, to feel something in a place that she had not really ever felt before, but she moved her hand experimentally, rubbing it against the walls of that hidden place like Kylo had encouraged her to do.

She bit her lip to silence a gasp and greedily added another finger beside the first. Kylo had been right about the sensation being pleasurable.

There was a pang of sadness that he wouldn’t be able to see how much she liked it. He would have wanted to touch her here, to join their bodies together and fill her up. It would have been so nice to let him, to know what it felt like to have someone else touch her the way she was touching herself.

She’d have to do her best to describe it for him.

Her other hand searched for the second place he’d told her about. When she found the hard little button of ecstasy with her fingers-exactly where he had told her it would be-she decided it was worth the embarrassment she’d felt when he had been explaining what she should do.

“You’ll need to find your clit,” he’d whispered.

“Kylo,” she’d hissed back. “You can’t say that word.”

“I’m going to get you used to hearing more words than that. I want to hear you say it when you tell me all about touching yourself.”

“I can’t say that!”

“Sure you can, but I can wait till you’re ready.”

Now she thought she’d be willing to say it a hundred times in gratitude just for him helping her to find it.

She had never imagined it was possible to feel such pleasure, and she was soon biting down on her lips to keep the moans quiet. Kylo had told her that it might be difficult to orgasm the first time, since she was unfamiliar with her body.

Instead she wondered if she should be ashamed of how quickly it happened and how much she wanted it. It washed over her like a rising tide, cresting on a peak that made her shake and tremble. It was the closest she had ever felt to heaven, an odd thing to happen in this little slice of sin.

When it was over, she was alone, but somehow, she felt more connected to Kylo than she ever had before.


	13. And You're OK With That?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged  
> and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you- Matthew 7: 1-2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know I am putting these out kind of quickly, but I am trying to get us to the end of the first segment of the story before the end of this week. There is one more chapter coming after this one, and then I will go back to my regular update schedule.
> 
> CW- this chapter includes elements that reference homophobia, religious based homophobia, homophobic parents and accompanying mistreatment of a young adult child

_Winter 2015_

Rey had expected to feel relieved when he semester and Christmas break finally arrived, but she had things on her mind that were more unpleasant than finals.

She’d put off having this talk with her dad for as long as she could, and it was some kind of miracle that someone else hadn’t already decided that they needed to tell him… for her own good, of course. It had to be done now, if there was any chance of her being able to do it on her own terms.

Just the thought if it made nausea swim in her stomach.

“You can do this, baby,” Kylo told her after listening to her patiently while she hyperventilated into the phone for the second time that week. “You don’t have to tell him about me, and I understand why you wouldn’t, but you have to tell him about college. You said he’s paying for your tuition, so he’s going to find out eventually. I’m sure he’s going to ask you about your class schedule every semester and I know you don’t want to lie to him.”

“I’m going to tell him about you,” she insisted. “I’m not ashamed of this or of you and I don’t want to have to hide it.”

“Rey, it’s alright…”

“No, it isn’t. I’m done hiding. I don’t care what anyone else thinks.”

“You care what your dad thinks. I’ll be here for you, no matter what happens, OK?”

Tears welled up in her eyes and she blinked them back rapidly. Now was not the time for her to fall apart. “I know you will be. Thank you.”

“I’m here for anything you need.”

“Anything?” she asked, not bothering to try and hide her sudden mischievous impulse.

“You know I am,” he told her, but his voice in her ear was suspicious and she bit back a laugh. 

“Tell me again how much you liked my letter.”

He chuckled, relaxing as he realized she was flirting with him. “If I do, will you write me another one?”

She grinned. “I already did. I mailed it yesterday.”

“You’re going to kill me, and I don’t even mind. I loved every single filthy word of it. You said 'clit' five times and I was so proud of you. Say cunt next time? For me? Please?”

“What if I said it now so you can hear me? Would you be able to die in peace?”

“Yes, and it would be worth it.”

She took a deep breath and then said primly, “I wish you weren’t in prison so you could touch my cunt.”

“That’s it. I’m dead. You’ve killed me with your dirty talk.” He was laughing at her, but she knew he liked it.

She giggled, and bit down on the urge to tell him she loved him for what felt like the hundredth time. The words were heavy on her tongue, desperate to get out, but she wanted it to be something special and memorable, not something she blurted out in between worries about her father and her awkward attempts at talking dirty to him.

It wasn’t the right time, but she hoped it would be soon. It would be impossible to hold it in for much longer.

***

She sat with hands twisted in her lap that night, feet tucked up under a blanket as she watched the flames dance in their small living room fireplace. The winters weren’t terribly cold here, but tonight there was frost on the ground outside that had crunched under feet when she’d brought in her bags from her last shopping trip before Christmas.

Christmas break seemed shorter than ever this year and she was running out of time.

“Dad?”

He looked up at her from over the top of the book he was reading, nothing more than vague curiosity in his eyes. He had no idea how much she had kept from him, and she suddenly hated herself for not having the courage to speak up sooner.

“I need to tell you something. A few things, actually.”

He set his book down with a frown. “You’re not pregnant, are you?”

She shook her head. “Fortunately, no, I am not pregnant. I don’t think it’s quite that bad.” She wasn't entirely sure he would agree with her, but she had some hope that maybe he would take the news better than everyone thought he was going to. 

“Alright, what is it?” He set his book down and looked at her patiently, waiting for her to find the right words.

“I guess it’s really two things, so I’ll just go with one thing at a time. Do you remember when I talked to you about changing my major?” She waited for him to nod before plunging ahead quickly, desperate to get it over with now that she’d started. “Well, I changed it.”

His brows drew together in concern. “You did? You didn’t talk to me about it?”

“I wanted to have at least one semester of my grades to show you before I told you. It’s a very competitive and demanding field, I wanted you to know I could handle it.”

“What did you change it to?”

“Political science. I want to go to law school.”

His pursed his lips, interlacing his fingers under his chin as he contemplated her in silent surprise. “Hmm. Law school is long and expensive, and as you said very competitive. Have you thought about what your life would look like if you do this? How you would manage a home and a family with that kind of schedule?”

“It would be quite difficult, of course, but that’s what makes the second thing I need to talk to you about so fortunate.”

“Fortunate, huh? Does this have something to do with a boy?”

She steeled herself tipping her chin up in defiance. “Yes, it does. I found one I really, really like." She hesitated, then decided that since she'd come this far she might as well be entirely honest. "I think I might even love him.”

That really surprised him and he shook his head, looking away from her to gather his thoughts before speaking. “Well, Poe’s stopped coming around, so I’m guessing it isn’t him.”

“No, it’s not Poe." Her bite her lip, focusing on the pain to help settle her nerves. "Do you…ah…do you remember the program that Rose started this summer? The pen pal program?”

His eyes narrowed on her face and she squirmed uncomfortably. “I remember. Mrs. Nu threw a fit about it. She was convinced that putting young and impressionable minds in contact with criminals would lead to nothing but bad things. If you're about to tell me what I'm afraid you're going to, it seems I should have listened more closely to her concerns. ”

Rey swallowed thickly. refusing to look away from his gaze. "Well, I think it’s led to something really amazing. Kylo’s so good to me, so sweet.”

Her father shook his head. “He's in prison for murder. Rey. He's never getting out because he's dangerous. I don't remember much about his trial, but I know it got pretty ugly and there was never any doubt that he deserved his sentence. I don't know how he's manipulated you into thinking you're in love with him.”

“He hasn't manipulated me! I was the one that suggested that I wanted to be more than friends! And you're right, he's never getting out, but it doesn’t matter to me.”

She could count on one hand the number of times that her father had raised his voice to her, but he was raising it now. “Well it should, Rey. It _should_ matter to you. He can’t give you a life. And this is on top of you deciding out of the blue that you want to be a lawyer? You won’t have a family or a real home. You’d be throwing it all away, for what?”

She flinched at the anger, the disappointment in his voice. “For love, for my happiness.”

“Being alone will not make you happy. I wanted a good life for you. Not this empty shell that you’re trying to create. Your mother…”

“Was an amazing person. But I’m not Mom.”

“No, I can see that.”

Rey recoiled, his words causing pain to twist like a vice around her heart, taking her breath away.

He sighed and rubbed the tension in his temples with his fingers. “I’m sorry. That was uncalled for. I know how much you loved her and proud she was of you. I just don’t think she would support these decisions and I don’t see how I possibly can.”

“Dad...”

Her words were cut off when the doorbell rang, and they both looked at one another in confusion. It was late, the roads were icy, and neither of them bad been expecting company.

He rose quickly, hurrying to the door with Rey close behind him as the doorbell rang again, fast and desperate.

“It could be someone who lost control of their car and ended up stuck in the ditch,” Rey speculated. “The roads were getting slick when I came home earlier.”

But he opened the door to a familiar face, not a stranger.

“Kaydel? Are you ok?" He pulled her in out of the cold, her nose and cheeks red from the biting wind and her eyes puffy and watery from the tears that were freezing on her lashes. At her feet were two small bags, stuffed to overflowing with clothes. "Rey, honey, grab her stuff off the porch."

Kaydel didn’t answer his questions, eyes searching wildly until she found Rey and then launching herself forward into Rey’s arms, her thin shoulders shaking with sobs. 

Rey caught her and shot her father a confused look as she [patted Kaydel's back tried to guide her friend into the warmth of the living room. “Hey," she whispered softly, "let’s get you warm OK?" She turned to find her father following behind them, clearly at a loss and uncertain how to help. "Dad can you grab her a blanket? She’s freezing."

He went to fetch one from the linen closet as Rey finally Kaydel seated on the couch cushion nearest to the fireplace. Her nose was still painfully red and her lips tinged in blue. "Jesus, Kay. Did you walk here?”

Kaydel nodded, hiccoughing through her sobs.

“OK, it’s alright. You’re OK.” Rey pulled in for another hug, letting her cry until she was able to compose herself.

It took them almost half an hour, several blankets, and a cup of hot cocoa to get her warmed up and calmed down enough to answer their questions about what had happened.

“They kicked me out,” she finally said dully, staring into the fire and refusing to look at Pastor Johnson.

“Your parents?”

Kaydel nodded, looking at Rey with fresh tears brimming in her eyes. “Someone saw me in Abilene. I was on a date and I guess they, uh, they told my parents.”

Rey looked at her dad, at the confusion on his face. He wasn’t putting together just yet. “She was on a date with a girl,” Rey whispered.

His brows drew together anger and Kaydel’s lip trembled. She looked desperately to Rey, clearly expecting the worst.

“So, they kicked you out into the cold, with nothing but two bags of clothes? They made you walk to…Did they even know where you were going? That you would have somewhere to go? Or were they expecting you to sleep outside tonight?”

Kaydel shrugged uncertainly. “I don’t know. They took my phone so I couldn’t call anyone. Told me they were paying for it and they wouldn’t be spending anymore money on…” she wiped her face on her sleeve as another round of tears began. “They called me names,” she finished.

“So, you came here,” Pastor Johnson said.

Kaydel nodded. “Rey told me that if something ever happened, that I could come here. She said that you wouldn’t let me sleep on the streets because I’m…um...because I like girls.” She looked up at him, waiting to see if Rey was right or she was about to be kicked out into the cold for the second time that night.

“Of course, you can come here,” he said, patting her hand reassuringly. “We have an extra bedroom upstairs, and Rey can help you get settled. I’ll go by your parent’s place tomorrow and see if they’ll give me the rest of your clothes and personal items.”

“Really?” The tension visibly drained out of her. 

“Yes, really. Let’s get you settled. Rey can find you something to eat if you’re hungry.” His voice was calm, but Rey knew that was a façade for Kay’s sake. She could feel the anger he was trying not to show.

She smiled at him gratefully as she grabbed Kaydel’s bags to take them upstairs. She knew that their own disagreement lay fresh and unhealed between them, but she also knew that he would never do _this_ , no matter how much he disliked her decisions.

He loved her, and they would work it out.

In the meantime, he would have some pointed words for Kaydel’s parents about their failures as parents and as Christians. Both of which required them to love their daughter unconditionally and not throw her out of their home into the frigid winter cold with no money and nowhere to go.

She got Kaydel settled, staying with her until she fell finally fell into an exhausted sleep, and then crept back downstairs to find her dad still sitting in his chair, staring pensively into the fire.

“Is she alright?” he asked when he looked up and found her standing hesitantly in the doorway.

“Yes, she’s sleeping.” She sat down on the couch again, tugging the blanket over her legs, and waited.

“I’m glad you told her to come here. I hate to think what might have happened to her otherwise. I still don’t know that I agree with choices that you’re making. I don’t think I do, but I owe it to you to hear you out about why you think these things will make you happy.”

“Thank you,” she said quietly.

“And even if I hear all those reasons and I still think that you’re wrong, I’m always going to love you.”

“I know, Dad. I love you, too.”

***

He came home the following day red in the face and trembling with anger, but he had several more trash bags stuffed full of Kaydel’s clothes and a new phone for her on their family plan.

Rey smiled at him and he hugged her, tucking her head under his chin, and giving her a quick squeeze before she headed to the kitchen to make lunch for everyone. Kaydel smiled twice as they ate sandwiches with chips, and Rey relaxed just a little. She was going be upset and hurt for a long time because of what her parents had done to her, but those horrible people wouldn’t be able to destroy her happiness forever.

She’d just finished the dishes, volunteering so that her Dad and Kaydel could sit down in the living room and talk privately about what had happened when he'd confronted her parents, when Kylo called.

She rushed up the stairs to her room, not missing how her dad’s eyes now followed her as she went.

“Hello?”

“Hey, baby, how’s everything? Did you talk to your dad?”

She sighed and sat down on the edge of her bed. “Yeah, I did. I told him about everything- about you and about school. He wasn’t happy about any of it, but I kind of expected that.”

“I’m so sorry. I hate that having me in your life is causing you problems," the guilt was thick in his voice, and she knew they were going to have to have another conversation soon about him not feeling bad about her choices. "Are you OK?”

“Yeah, I’m OK. Things kind of took an unexpected turn while I was talking to my dad. My friend is here now, she's staying with us because her parents found she was dating girls."

There was a silence on the other end of the line, a cold and weighted pause that she didn’t understand.

“They found out she was…and now she’s living with you and your dad? The pastor?”

“Yeah, she’s…”

“And you’re ok with that?” His tone was accusatory, his voice rising in anger. She felt like she was being held responsible for some crime, but she couldn’t figure out what he thought she had done. “She’s your friend, Rey.”

“Yes?” Rey felt her own voice rising, uncertainty making her defensive. “She’s one of my best friends that’s why…”

There was a click and then nothing.

He’d hung up on her.


	14. What Happened?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord.   
> "Plans to prosper you and not harm you. Plans to give you hope and a future."- Jeremiah 29:11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, we are finally reaching the end of the first part of the story. Things are changing for them in a big way, so I think you'll understand why I was so determined to get here. I will be going back to my regular update schedule now, which should be weekly. 
> 
> If you feel like checking out my other works to keep you busy, they can be found here-  
> https://archiveofourown.org/users/Love_andbalance/works
> 
> My current WIPs include two canonverse stories (a post TLJ fix-it and a post TROS dark!Rey), a dark fic, and a cozy murder mystery, but I have quite a few stories that are already finished, too.
> 
> I want to thank all of you again for your incredible encouragement. I know I am not always the most eloquent when answering comments but all of you have helped give me the courage to write this story and I appreciate each and every one of you!

The pain had stolen the breath from her lungs and left her numb with shock.

Not once in the months that they had been communicating had Kylo ever hurt her. He hadn't even succeeded in the beginning when it felt like that was all he wanted to do, but he had hurt her now. It had cut her to the core for him to shut her out so summarily without a word of explanation.

It would have been better if he had shouted or cursed, yelled his explanations into the phone so that she could understand and have a chance to defend herself against whatever offense he believed she had committed. Instead, he had been cold and somehow, that had been worse.

He knew she had no way of calling him back or showing up to demand an explanation. A letter was the best she could to try and coax him into explaining what her infraction had been, and she had no way of knowing whether he would even open it. He was inaccessible to her, and her fear that he might be willing to close her out of his life permanently and never tell her why was enough to send to her knees.

That was where Kaydel found her, kneeling on the floor of her bedroom with the phone in her hand and dried tears on her cheeks.

“Rey? Is everything ok? What happened?”

“He hung up on me. I don’t know what happened or what I did.” Rey tipped her head up to look at Kaydel, her head shaking and her whole body trembling. “I didn’t do anything wrong,” she said softly, and she couldn’t control the quiver in her voice any more than she could stop the new tears from coming.

“Who did? Kylo?” Rey nodded helplessly and Kaydel frowned. “That doesn’t sound like something he’d normally do. Come on, let’s get you up and see if we can figure out what happened.”

Rey got to her feet, but she wiped at her tears and tried to smile. “No, it’s alright. You’ve been through enough problems of your own lately, you don’t need to add my stuff to your list of worries.”

Kay shook her head firmly and gave Rey a little shove so that she sat down hard on the edge of her bed. “Nope, you helped me and I’m gonna help you. That’s what friends are for, right?” She didn’t wait for Rey to answer before continuing, “Besides, it’ll help me take my mind off things. Your dad said his visit to my parents’ house didn’t go well.”

Rey made a soft noise of sympathy and hugged her. “Are you OK?”

Kay sighed and smiled at her tiredly. “No, but I expected it to go at least this badly if they ever found out. I have a place to be and most of my stuff so it's turned out surprisingly well. Now,” she nudged Rey with her hip, “move over and tell me what happened with Kylo.”

They sat on the bed, arms linked together, as she explained what happened during her brief but devastating conversation with Kylo.

“So, it was about me?” Kaydel's face said clearly that she didn't understand what had happened either.

Rey shook her head and lifted her shoulder in a puzzled shrug. “I would say yes based on the conversation, but looking at the big picture probably not? We’ve talked about all my friends before and he’s never been weird about it. It seemed to be something specific to you being here. He said you were my friend, like I had done something to you, but I don’t understand what.” She was quiet for a moment as she thought over what he had said. “Or what my dad has to do with it.”

“He brought up your dad?”

“Yeah, he seemed upset that you were here with my dad.”

“Hmm, well a lot of churches aren’t exactly friendly to people like me, so maybe he misunderstood something about what was going on? I mean, I know you told me he doesn’t have very positive views about religion.”

Rey nodded slowly, trying to think back over all of the bits of information she had collected from him about his past. Not enough for her to really make sense of it, but enough to give her hope that maybe she could work this out with him.

She sighed and tucked her head against Kaydel’s shoulder. “That might be it. Thanks. You and Jannah are the only ones that haven’t been absolutely hostile about me being with him.”

Kaydel smiled at her sadly. “I know what it’s like to have people tell me who to love and claim it’s for my own good. That’s what my parents and their church always say- that they’re trying to safe my soul. But you love who you love, there’s no changing it.”

Rey nodded. She didn't understand all of the struggles Kaydel went through, but she understood that people had a lot of strong opinions when they thought you were in love with the wrong person, despite it nearly always being none of their business. “So, how’d your date go the other night?” she asked.

Kaydel’s smile was blinding. “It was great. She’s such an amazing person and she’s been out to her family and friends for a while, so she’s really comfortable being open with her true self. I want to feel that way someday, instead of afraid.”

“You’ll get there,” Rey said, “and if there’s anything I can do to help you feel less afraid, I’ll do it. But for now, I’ll help you put all your stuff in drawers, and you can tell me all about this new girl.”

They spent a few hours talking and organizing the stuff that had been tossed into trash bags by Kay’s parents. It seemed like most of her personal items were there, and they soon had the guest room feeling more like a home. By the time Rey left, she was cuddled contentedly on the bed, wrapped in blankets and sound asleep. Her body needed rest, now that she felt safe. She had been carrying so much fear for so long, of people mistreating her for who and what she was.

Maybe Kylo was afraid for her, too.

Rey knew she would have to write to him later, when she’d had some time to process it all and figure out what to say to him. Hopefully, he’d be willing to open it and actually listen to her explanations. 

***

It took almost a week for him to call her after she mailed the letter- a short simple thing that said only

_Kylo,_

_Kaydel is fine. Her parents kicked her out and she needed a safe place to stay. Please call me._

_Rey_

She suspected that meant that he’s stared at it a few days before opening it, but he _had_ opened it so that was something anyway. She swallowed hard before answering him, her pulse a rapid flutter in her veins that raced ahead to keep time with the butterflies dancing in her stomach. 

“Hello?”

His voice on the other end of the line was still cold and hesitant. “Hey, I…uh, I guess maybe I should let you explain about what happened with Kaydel.”

“I guess so," she said quietly. "Her parents kicked her out of their house with no phone and nowhere to go. She came here and we gave her a place to stay. She’s got her own room and gifts under the Christmas tree. Dad got her a phone under our family plan. She was pretty shaken up when she got here, but she’s safe and she can stay as long as she needs to.”

He sighed. “Your dad, he’s not…he’s treating her well?”

“I’m not sure what you think he’d be doing to her, but yeah, they get along. He isn’t going to be mean to her or anything, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“I know you’re mad at me, but are you sure, Rey? Are you sure he’s not doing anything to her?”

“You wanna ask her yourself?”

He paused, clearly wanting to trust her, but he eventually whispered, “Yeah, kinda.”

Rey knocked on the door of the room next to hers and explained to Kaydel that Kylo wanted to talk to her. She listened patiently to the way her friend answered his questions- “No” and “He’s always been nice to me,” and “I’m doing much better now,” -before Kaydel handed back the phone.

“Thank you,” Rey mouthed to her before turning her attention back to Kylo. “Does that help?”

“Yes, and I’m sorry. I just…”

“Yeah, well, so am I. To be honest I’m really confused about what happened here. I lo…Hmm, I care about you and you scared me. I thought you might never talk to me again and I don’t even understand why.”

“I know.” He sounded so sad, so broken, that it tugged at her heart.

“Can you…can you just maybe help me understand? I know I told you I wouldn’t push about your past but it’s hard when I don’t even get what I’ve done wrong. You don’t have to tell me everything, but I would like an explanation for this…”

“I’ll tell you,” he interrupted. “I’ll tell you everything. I should have told you sooner, before you told your dad and everyone else about us. It wasn’t fair for me to let you do that when you might not even want to be with me once I tell you.”

“Kylo, I am with you now and I don’t think anything could be worse than what you did to your father. I’m with you no matter what.”

He hummed doubtfully, but he didn’t argue. “It’s a long story, so we won’t have time for me to tell you now. Can I write it? Can I send it to you?”

“Of course, whatever you need to do.”

He sighed, a forceful exhale that held a world of fear and tension. “Rey?”

“Yeah?”

“I missed you, so much, and I’m sorry.”

“I missed you, too.”

***

The letter he sent her was ten pages long.

There were names that she recognized- Leia, Luke, Han. There were others that she didn’t -Snoke, Bazine, Mitaka.

His past rolled out of him- with his anger and his hatred and his regret- in a story that made her weep and rage and press her hand to her mouth as sickness clawed its way up her throat to coat her mouth.

He blamed them, the adults that failed to protect him or harmed him directly, but mostly he blamed himself. For not being able to stop it, for not being able to protect himself or protect others. His parents had said he’d been wild, untamed, ungrateful. He’d internalized that to mean he was to blame for what had followed their decision to send him away.

She was crushed, twisted, drained, by the time he described to her how hopeless he had been, how filled with fear and panic, the night he had killed his father.

She would have given anything to go back to that moment, to hold that broken child in her arms and tell him that it wasn’t his fault, that she would have done the same if she had been in his shoes, but she can’t- so she sleeps with his words pressed against her chest and a heavy weight on her heart.

***

He waited for her to write him back, instead of calling her. It took longer that way but he had told her about happened to him and the things he had done…It might have been enough to break her, to finally drive her away, and if she was going to reject him now, if he had to find out that she was disgusted by him and the things he’d lived through, he knew it would be easier to see it in writing than to hear it in her voice. If he heard it, he knew he’d never stop hearing it, that it would echo in his mind in the dark silences for the rest of his life.

He would deserve that, but he knew he couldn’t live with it, that it would drive him mad.

Opening the letter when it came was the hardest thing he had ever done, worse even than standing alone in that courtroom so many years ago waiting to find out his fate. Somehow this felt more like his life hung in the balance, because without her, her wasn't sure he the strength to endure the rest of his days in this place.

Inside the envelope was a single slip of paper, covered from top to bottom with the same phrase repeated a hundred times over, as though she knew he wouldn’t believe her the first time and hoped by the end he might.

_I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you_

_I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you_

_I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you_

_I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you_

He put his head in his hands, his heart breaking painfully open to let her the rest of the way inside. She knew the worst there was to know about him and this was her response, to reach out to him with more love than he had ever known.

It was agony to wait, but he called her as soon as he was able, and she answered on the first ring, like she had been waiting for him.

“Hello?”

“Rey! I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

***

“Did you have a good Christmas?”

“Hmm?” Rey looked up to find Poe standing in the doorway, smiling at her hesitantly as she arranged chairs for the Bible group meeting, the first one after the Christmas holiday.

She’d be going back to school soon, and it was nearly overwhelming how different her life felt in those few scant weeks of break. She’d been thinking about that and had gotten so distracted thinking about Kylo’s last letter- did people really do that with their tongues?- and hadn’t heard Poe approaching.

“It was lovely, thank you,” she said politely, ignoring the blush on her cheeks.

She flicked her gaze quickly to check on Kaydel, who was laying out the cookies on the snack table. Everyone had been kind when they found out that she was living with Rey and Pastor Johnson, but Rey was still feeling protective. She’d already made up her mind to haul Mrs. Nu out of the building herself if she even so much as looked in Kaydel’s direction tonight.

“Listen, uh, I know things didn’t exactly go well the last time we talked, but since you’ve had some time to cool down…”

She smiled and straightened to her full height, back ramrod straight. “I’m afraid I’m still not interested, but thanks anyway.” 

He sputtered awkwardly at her quick rejection; his tone perplexed as he stammered, “You’re still mad?”

Rey shrugged. “I’m not mad, I’m just not interested. I’m in a relationship with someone else.”

He stepped back with a frown, crossing his arms over his chest as he contemplated her like she might be lying. “Who? I haven’t seen you hanging around with anyone. Is it someone I know?”

Rey clucked her tongue at him over his tone. “No, it isn’t. I’m romantically involved with Kylo.” She wasn’t sure why she's said it. It certainly wasn’t any of his business who she dated, but she wanted him to know. He needed to understand that she had made a choice and it wasn’t him.

“Kylo? The guy from prison that you’re writing to?” He wasn't bothering to keep his voice down in the crowded room, and several people turned to look as he huffed at her in annoyance.

“Yep, that’s the one.” She went back to rearranging chairs, turning her back to him as he tried to process her words.

“So, you won’t date me because you’re talking to some guy that won’t ever get out of prison? He’s a murderer!”

Rey turned to face him, her defense ready on her lips, when she noticed that someone else had come to stand behind Poe, her eyes now glittering with undisguised malice.

“How interesting,” Mrs. Nu muttered. “It seems those felons have brought sin into our midst, after all. Exactly as I predicted.”

Rey set her teeth and smiled, pulling her lips back into what was nearly a snarl. Her eyes met Rose’s from across the room as Mrs. Nu flounced away triumphantly and they both winced.

Rey tried to comfort herself with the knowledge that at least Kaydel wouldn’t be the subject of that night’s gossip, but by the time they got home she was livid from listening to Mrs, Nu catastrophize her relationship and point a finger of blame at Rose for suggesting the program to begin with.

She was almost too tired to answer the phone when Kylo called, but it wasn’t his usual time and she pressed the phone to her ear with a knot of worry in her stomach. “Please don’t tell me something terrible has happened. I’ve had the worst night with Mrs. Nu and I think I might cry.”

“You can tell me all about that hateful bitch later,” he said quickly, but his voice was bubbling with excitement. “You’re never going to fucking believe what’s happened, baby!”

“What? What happened?”

“Do you remember that Supreme Court case that you wrote to me about at the beginning of your first semester? About juvenile offenders and life sentences?”

“Yeah, I remember. It happened after your conviction, which was such bullshit.” Rey rubbed a hand over her face, the tension gathering there having turned into a fully developed headache.

“They made it retroactive!”

She sat bolt upright in bed, her problems with Poe and Mrs. Nu forgotten. “What?”

“The Supreme Court made the ruling retroactive. It now applies to all juvenile offenders serving life without parole. I’ve got six months to file the paperwork requesting a resentencing hearing. If they change my sentence, I could be eligible for parole someday.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know you were probably hoping to find out exactly what happened in Kylo's past, and we are going to get the details, but it isn't quite time yet. That will happen in the next section of the story, which focuses on his resentencing process.


	15. Absolutely Nothing I Wouldn't Do

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Never will I leave you, never will I forsake you- Hebrews 13:5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter took a bit longer because I've redone it repeatedly, trying to make sure that I handled everything well. In the next part of this story we are are going to get into stuff with the justice system and the religious fanaticism that was in the tags so there's no way for me to realistically write about that without touching on difficult themes. I am trying my best to do so sensitively and responsibly. If you feel like my word choice or depictions are wrong please talk to me about it, I am open to learning. 
> 
> I noticed that some of you are picking up on the conversion therapy tag and Kylo's distress about Kaydel. I want to address that upfront, so no one feels hurt or baited, and say that Kylo is not bi in this story and he is not the one that experienced that. Kylo was abused and witnessed others being abused. Some of those people he cared about were subjected to conversion therapy. 
> 
> One of the main that I am exploring in this story is the way that religion can be hurtful when rules and doctrine become more important than the well-being of individuals and conversion therapy is very harmful example of that. I had to decide if I should try to write Kylo as bisexual and have him experience it directly and ultimately decided that I didn't think that I would be able to properly write that from his POV. I have never experienced it and I knew it was beyond my skills as a writer and not my story to tell. 
> 
> I do know what it feels like to see people you care about be abused and not be able to do anything to stop and the guilt and self loathing that goes along with that, so that is the route that I went for the story. Again, I know these are difficult themes, so if you feel that I have made mistakes, please let me know. 
> 
> CW // TW for this chapter- prison and the justice system, mention of systemic bias and racism, mention of homophobia

Rey bounced her foot restlessly and chewed on her lower lip as she waited, hands tucked deep into the pockets of an oversized blue hoodie that it was already almost too warm outside to wear. 

The drive hadn’t truly been far, not much beyond what she made each day for school now that it was back in session for the spring semester, but today it felt like it had taken a lifetime.

Hopes and worries had chased themselves across her mind as she drove. After more than half a year of knowing him, of wanting him and loving him, of fighting for him and their relationship, to finally be taking this step seemed like unexpectedly reaching the precipice on a long climb. She’d been so focused on each step that she hadn’t realized how far she’d come until she’d looked up and found the ground far below her. 

Suddenly, she was afraid of heights, her heart hammering away in her chest at the enormity of the situation and the length she had to fall.

What if he didn’t like her? What if ,when faced with the reality of her, he decided it didn’t live up to his expectations? Fear and anticipation warred in her mind and nervous nausea rolled in her stomach, leaving a bitter taste in her mouth that she couldn’t wash away.

She’d rechecked with him countless times to make sure that he had added her to the necessary list and she’d read all the rules and procedures- no loud music in the car, roll up your windows and lock your doors, no cell phones or electronics allowed in the facility- and had followed the dress code- no clothing with profanity, no skirts or shorts more than three inches above the middle of the knee, no leggings, no open toed shoes, no bare shoulders, back, or midriff. She had opted for tennis shoes, sweat pants, and a long sleeve shirt with a hoodie, just in case. She might not have been as pretty as she would have liked to be, but she wasn’t going to give them any excuse to turn her away.

She’d been scanned through a metal detector and sniffed by a drug detecting dog before she’d been allowed to walk into the prison, have her ID inspected and then walk through door after door that clanged shut behind her with a terrible feeling of finality. 

This would be her world for only a few hours, a temporary confinement that already made her skin crawl, she couldn’t imagine what it felt like to hear that sound and know you’d truly never be allowed to leave. Kylo had been so young then, younger even than she was now. Just thinking about it made her heart break for him all over again.

Then she’d found herself in a large room with small tables scattered throughout, most of them already occupied by small groups that didn’t even turn to acknowledge her as she passed- they were deeply focused on the person they had come to see. 

She found a table of her own, scratched and battered with age and hard use, and sat tensely on the edge of her seat with nothing to do but wait. She had nothing at all with her except twenty-five dollars to buy snacks and drinks from the vending machine and, because there were no paper bills allowed, that was sitting on the table in front of her in a Ziplock bag full of quarters. It was a sad silent witness to her anxious trembling. 

She looked around aimlessly as she waited, trying to calm her rioting nerves. The facility was somehow more intimidating than she had imagined. Guards with guns and blank faces, walls and fences topped with barbed wire. Kylo had been right about the pervasive hopelessness and the smell. They would have only two hours, and still she wasn’t sure if she wanted time to speed up or slow down.

There were others in the room, some were still waiting but most were already seated with their loved one. There were older couples, parents she assumed, and young women like her, those whose husbands or boyfriends were unfortunate enough to be on the inside.

The families broke her heart the most. Toddlers and young children, mothers with clear plastic bags that held a few diapers, wipes, and a sippy cup. Sometimes the children strained away from the now unfamiliar faces and she could see the pain it caused the fathers that wanted nothing more than to spend a few precious hours with the children they barely knew. Other times they ran to them with happy and delighted squeals that made her smile until she remembered that a few hours was all they had.

Most of them, she knew now, were in here for nonviolent offenses, mostly drugs. They were usually poor, unable to afford to fight the system that clung to a failed war on drugs and its ridiculously overly punitive sentences. She hadn’t needed to see their faces to know that a disproportionate number of them would be young black men, because a few minutes of research was all it took to know that the war on drugs was really a war on the impoverished and the oppressed. 

It made her skin crawl.

The weight of everything that needed to be changed about this system that was unfair to so many in a myriad of ways weighed heavily on her, but she knew that too many people looked away from the reality. They knew it was wrong, but they felt helpless to change it in the face of the mountainous bureaucracy. Loving Kylo had given her a glimpse into a flawed world, she couldn’t turn away now and do nothing.

She lifted her head as the door once again opened and two guards entered with a new inmate and her eyes widened in surprise. He was taller than either of the men that flanked him and much broader. The pictures he’d sent her had done nothing to prepare her for his size. She was not short for a woman, but she knew that beside him she would feel impossibly small. 

Her gazed roamed shamelessly over him as he walked. He wasn’t wearing the white jumpsuit now, but a pair of dark coveralls that stretched tightly over his chest.. He’d told her they would strip search him before he entered the visitation room and again when he left. That he was willing to do that, to be subjected to such an intimate violation, to see her made her heart ache. 

The harsh fluorescent lighting made his skin look almost unnaturally pale, his eyes nearly black in comparison. His dark hair was ruffled, like he’d pushed his fingers through it in agitation while he waited. 

Had he worried that she might not show up after all?

The relief that washed over his face when he spotted her was painfully obvious, as was the anxious crease in his brow immediately afterward.

She stood up as they got closer, hands twisting restlessly in her pockets as he approached her. Her heart was fluttering madly, each step that he took pushing it to beat faster until he stopped just beyond arms’ reach and everything else in the room fell away. She’d dreamed of seeing him a hundred times, but now that he was in front of her, she was lost, unable to even summon the courage to say hello. 

“Can’t believe you finally got a visitor,” the guard to his left said gruffly. “You’re allowed to hug her when you first get here and again before you leave. Other than that, you can hold her hand and that’s it.” Rey’s eyes swung to look at him, taking in the guard for the first time. He was a young man, probably only a few years older than her, blonde with a scruffy beard and a tired expression. He didn’t seem to be joking and her heart redoubled it’s efforts to beat its way out of her chest. 

She hadn’t dared to hope that she’d be allowed to touch him.

Kylo turned to look at the guard to his right- an older, grumpier man with darker hair- waiting for a nod of confirmation before he hesitantly opened his arms and waited. The confidence that he had in calls and letters, about what he would do to her body if given the chance, fell away and suddenly he was a broken boy again, unsure if she would allow something as simple as a hug.

She stepped forward, nearly tripping over her own feet in her haste to reassure him. She wrapped her arms around his waist, her cheek pressed tight to his chest as he enveloped her in his warmth. He smelled like strong laundry detergent and the fabric of his coveralls was scratchy against her cheek but in that brief moment everything that they endured to get here was worth it.

He pulled away first, glancing anxiously at the guards before rubbing her arm reassuringly and letting his lips subtly graze her temple when she whined in protest. He reached for her hand and walked to the table where she had been waiting.

“Takes all kinds, I guess,” the younger guard muttered, and Rey shot him an incensed look before wiping the tears from her cheeks and sitting back down in her hard plastic chair. It was cracked and wobbled when she sat on it, but there was nowhere else in the world that she would rather have been sitting than here with him.

He was staring at her reverently, his thumb tracing small circles on the back of her hand and she dipped her head, suddenly shy and unsure what to say. “I got a form,” she said hesitantly, “from the desk when I came in? I paid for a picture of us together. I hope that’s ok.”

He nodded quickly. “Sure, that’s…whatever makes you happy.”

“You make me happy,” she said simply and he smiled, his face relaxing into a bright grin that made her smile in return. “Thank you for adding me to the list and letting me visit. I know you didn’t really want to.”

“I wanted to see you,” he said softly. “I just didn’t want it to be here, like this. You don’t belong here.”

She glanced around at the tables that had young wives and elderly parents, the bright innocent faces of the children. “None of us do, but here we are.”

“I only changed my mind because it’s going to take so long for a new trial, if I can even find someone who’s willing to take the case.” His voice cracked on a hopelessness that she knew he was trying to hide.

Her tightened on his reflexively, rage bubbling in her stomach. “We’ll find someone. I can’t believe Texas doesn’t have public defenders for appeals and resentencing cases. That’s such…”

“Hey,” he shook his head, nodding slightly at the guard that had turned to look at her as her voice rose in agitation. “It’s alright, calm down.”

She huffed but settled back down in her seat. “It’s just bullshit,” she said quietly. “It’s already been two months. Have you heard back from the Lone Star Justice Alliance?”

“Not yet,” he told her grimly. “They’re still reviewing my request for help. They have more cases that they can handle, and only take on the ones that are most desperate, with the highest chance of success.”

“I’m sure they do have more than they can handle,” she snorted, “that’s what happens when the state doesn’t provide adequate services.”

“Did you expect them to?” he asked gently. “Someone profits off of every aspect of this place-the prison labor, the phone calls, the fees- all of it. They have to keep the beds full.”

“Bullshit,” she muttered again, but she knew he was right. Prison was a for profit system that broke families for the bottom line. 

“Are you sure you want to be a lawyer and get mixed up in all this mess?” He looked sad, like maybe he regretted encouraging her.

“Absolutely,” she said fiercely. Every day that she learned more about it, she was more determined to help fix it. “What happens to people like you, people like them,” she said, waving a hand to indicate the other tables, “if everyone gives up on you?”

“I love you,” he said softly. “You give me hope for the world and I thought I had lost that a long time ago.”

“I love you, too,” she said, her cheeks flooding with heat under the intensity of his gaze. “You helped give me something to fight for.” 

There was a moment of quiet between them, where she wished fiercely that she could do much more than hold his hand, her eyes dropping to the plush curve of his mouth, soft and pink and overwhelmingly tempting. She said a quick and fervent prayer that someday she would know what it felt like when it settled over her own. 

They both laughed awkwardly when a young boy at the table next to them squealed loudly and threw his cup which clattered across the floor to land at Rey’s feet. She handed it back to his mother, who muttered a hasty apology, before looking at Kylo with a rueful smile. 

“What happens if they do decide to take the case?” she asked, trying to smooth over the tension and return the conversation to something more productive than her rampant sexual fantasies.

“I’m not sure. I know my chances of a reduced sentence are better if I can get all the evidence admitted this time that that bastard Judge San Tekka wouldn’t let the jury hear the first time, but all those witnesses…I have no idea where they are now.”

“There has to be a way to track them down,” Rey said with a frown.

He shrugged, clearly uncertain. “I guess we might be able to track them down if we had a lot of time to spend combing the internet and social media accounts, but who knows how long that might take.”

“We have to try,” she said. “Mail me a list of names and I’ll start looking.”

“You need to focus on your classes,” he said, brow creasing in concern. “I’m grateful that you want to help, but you have plans that will help a lot more people than just me so you’ve got to keep your grades up.”

“My grades are fine. I am not taking any math this semester and I have plenty of time to help. Rose spends most of her time with Finn these days and when Kaydel isn’t with her girlfriend she just hangs out in my room eating snacks so she can do that while I look.”

He shook his head at her, apparently recognizing the tone that he knew meant she wouldn’t be argued with, and changed the subject. “How is she doing? Kaydel?”

“She had a bad week last week, ran into her parents at the grocery store and they wouldn’t even acknowledge that they’d seen her, but other than that she’s been better- happier, I think, than she’s been since I’ve known her.”

He smiled, and she stroked her thumb over his hand, a moment of silent acknowledgment that she knew how important it was to him that Kaydel not be hurt the way that those he loved had been hurt. 

“And your dad? Was he okay with you coming here?”

She winced. 

“He wasn’t thrilled,” she said honestly. “There’s been a lot going on and we haven’t really had time to talk. He’s trying, and he understands that you deserve a fair sentence- thank you for letting me explain to him about what happened so he understood you better and why i care about you so much- but I don’t think he’s quite ready to support the idea of me being with you.”

“He’s afraid you’ll get hurt. I understand that, because it scares me, too. I don’t want to ever be the reason that you’re sad.”

“That’s a big part of it but there’s also been some trouble at the church.”

“What kind of trouble?” His face screwed up an expression of troubled surprise. She hadn't mentioned this before. He had enough to worry about and their phone time was limited.

“Just Mrs. Nu and her usual pettiness,” Rey said quickly. “She’s been telling everyone about Kaydel and making sure that everyone knows I’m dating you ever since she overheard me talking to Poe.”

“Okay?”

She sighed, wishing she hadn’t let the conversation wander to this but knowing she wasn’t willing to lie. “Now there’s nasty whispers from some of the congregation about him not following the word of God because some people just have to be homophobic bastards, and even more talking behind his about how maybe he shouldn’t be leading a flock of God’s children if he can’t even lead his own daughter.”

“I’m sorry,” Kylo said, squeezing her hand. He looked defeated, guilty, but not surprised. Certainly if there was anyone in her life who would understand the extent that people were willing to use their faith as a weapon, it would be him.

“It’s really not about you,” she assured him. “It’s about causing problems. She’s been on Rose’s case about everything, too. Stirring up trouble over the Bible group over the Easter bunny decorations, of all things. Using Rose’s friendship with me and Kaydel as a way to discredit her leadership decisions.”

“There’s nothing you can do?”

Rey ran a hand over her face, puffing a frustrated breath between her teeth. “We should have kicked her out a long time ago. If we do it now it looks like we’re just afraid of facing criticism. It gives weight to her complaints.”

He grunted. “Sounds like the stuff my mom used to complain about. Politics.”

“It basically is,” she agreed. “My dad thinks it’s best to just acknowledge her right now. Let her run herself out of steam while we keep our heads clear. No one had asked him about us or about Kaydel directly and he hasn’t acknowledged it. Mrs. Kanata keeps her from being too openly disrespectful during the meetings and we try our best to ignore her otherwise.”

“I hope that works,” he told her, watching her carefully and considering his words before he spoke. “Most of the time I’m sure it does, but some people are more than petty and they aren’t happy till they hurt someone. Make sure you can draw the line if you need to.”

“She’s a pain but I don’t think that she’s actually dangerous,” she assured him before peeking at him from under her lashes and smiling at him mischievously. “Though, she _did_ tell me three times last week that Poe is dating someone else now- some girl from another town named Zorri. My feelings are _hurt._ ”

“The one that got away,” he teased and she giggled for a moment, before standing up and reaching for the bag of coins on the table. 

“Want anything?” she asked. “I’m thirsty and I’m gonna grab a drink and a snack.” 

“I’ll have whatever you want to grab,” he said. “I’m not picky.” He waited until she turned to walk away before quietly saying her name. His face was troubled when she turned back around. “I wish I could be taking you out, paying for things on our first date.”

She widened her eyes comically and shook her bag of coins. “I guess you’ll just have to settle for having a sugar mama for now.”

He was still laughing when she came back a few minutes later

“You really are always hungry, aren’t you?” he asked, eyeing her overflowing armful of drinks and treats.

“Yes, I really am,” she said, dropping her hoard on the table and tearing open a package of M&Ms to pour a handful into her hand before handing him the package. 

“This is good, right?”

She looked up at him in surprise. “What?”

“This. Us. It’s good...You didn’t take one look at me and decide I wasn’t what you wanted after all.”

“I was afraid _you_ wouldn’t want _me,_ ” she confessed, squeezing his hand to soothe both of their fears. “But I think we’re good.”

Her heart was full as he laughed with her and ate half her snacks and smiled at her when she gave the rest of her money to the family beside them so they could buy a few of their own after they overheard them mention how hard it was for them to afford the trip every month. 

She was acutely aware of his body and her need for him to touch her as he stood beside her, awkwardly bumping her as he tried to lean down enough to get both of their faces in the photo she’d paid for.

When their time was up and she gripped him tightly in a hug that she knew would have to fuel her until she could see him again, she was trembling with the pain of having to say goodbye. 

“I love you,” she whispered fiercely, “and I am going to fight for our life together.”

“Me too, baby,” he promised, rubbing her back reassuringly. “There’s absolutely nothing I wouldn’t do to be able to be with you.”

***

Kylo thought about it for exactly one day, holding one copy of the photo she had paid for of the two of them together and imagining the way that she had looked as she sat perched on that stupid fucking wobbly orange plastic chair as she told him she was going to spend her free time trying to track down the witnesses he needed when he didn’t even know if he could get a lawyer in time.

Then he did the most humiliating thing that he could think of, because he had meant it when he promised her that he would do anything in the world for her.

He picked up the phone and called his mother- whose name he had added to the list of people he could call when he first came to this fucking place and who had never once actually tried to contact in all the years since- prepared to beg for her to help him afford the lawyers and the private detective that he needed to have a real chance at a life.

She didn’t answer.

***

“How was your visit,” Kaydel asked. They’d been busy for the past few days and the Bible meeting was the first time Rey had seen much of her since she’d come home from her first meeting with Kylo. She was leaning forward in her chair now, eyes bright with curiosity, and Rey could tell she had just been waiting for the other Bible group members to leave so that she could finally ask.

Rey smiled, unable to hide the bubbling joy that had been tumbling around in her bloodstream, and reached into her bag to pull out the picture of her and Kylo.

Kaydel looked at the picture in her hand and let out a low whistle. “He’s very tall,” she said, turning the photo around so that Rose could see it.

“He’s huge,” Rey agreed, chewing happily on a cookie that was left over from that night’s meeting. “I couldn’t believe how big he was when they brought him in.”

“Weren’t you scared?” Rose asked her, looking at the picture and shaking her head.

“No,” Rey said bluntly. “I have no reason to be scared of him.”

Rose sighed softly, and Rey felt another small twinge of annoyance. It had been months now since she’d told them about her relationship with Kylo and Rose was still resistant to the idea, despite having some idea now of everything that he’d been through.

Not that she was the only one. After Mrs. Nu’s gossip Mrs. Kanata and Rose’s sister Paige were the only ones that had even said goodbye to her when the bible meeting was over.

“Well, Mrs. Nu and her buddies share your concerns about Kylo and my safety,” Rey said now, glumly shooting what she knew was a low blow at Rose in retaliation.

“That’s not fair,” Rose said hotly. 

Rey shrugged. “Isn’t it? You’re determined not to like him no matter what he does.”

“I just want you to be safe and happy,” Rose said, looking at Rey with a pleading expression. “You know that, right?”

Rey nodded, softening at the genuine conflict that she could sense in Rose’s eyes. “I do know that, but I can’t fight the court system of the state of Texas _and_ Mrs. Nu _and_ my dad _and_ you. I need you to be on my side.” 

Rose swallowed hard and looked at Kaydel, seeking something to help her figure out what to do. She’d always been fiercely loyal, fiercely certain of right and wrong, and now she was floundering.

“I’ve had people telling me that my whole life,” Kaydel told her with a soft smile. “That they couldn’t support who I wanted to be with because they love me, because they are just worried for my soul.” She took a deep breath and gripped Rose’s hand. “It doesn’t change the fact that you can’t tell someone who to love. It’s your job as her friend to let her know that you’re concerned, and you’ll be there for her if she gets hurt, but you have to support what makes her happy now.”

Rey said nothing, looking at Rose patiently as she weighed the words in her mind.

“Okay,” she said finally, nodding at Rey and smiling tremulously. “I’m always going to be on your side and if you need my support then I can’t _not_ give it to you.”

Rey hugged her tightly, sniffling as all three of them wiped tears from their cheeks.

“Actually I’ve been thinking,” Rose said finally, “about the problem that you said Kylo was having, and how he might not be able to afford a lawyer? I think I might have an idea about how you can help him with that.”

***

It took a few weeks for Rey to convince Kylo. He was adamantly opposed to her being involved but she wore him down, reminding him that he promised her that he would do anything. If he wanted to be with her, then there had to be no chance that they weren’t willing to take.

She took a deep breath and dialed the phone number he had given her.

An unfamiliar voice answered on the third ring. “Hello?”

“Yes, hello. I would like to speak with Senator Organa.”

“This is Senator Organa, who is this?”

“My name is Rey Johnson, I’m calling…”

“If you’re lobbying for someone, this is highly inappropriate. This number is only for friends and family.” Her tone was brisk and stern, clearly this was a woman used to having and wielding power.

“Yes, ma’am, I know that,” Rey said quickly, the words spilling over themselves in her haste to get them out before Kylo’s mother could hang up. “I got this number from your son.”

There was a heavy silence until Leia spoke again. “I have no son.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Rey said stubbornly, “you do. I know that there’s no way for me to understand the pain that you must be in after everything that happened, but there is more to this story than what was on the news. I’m sure you’ve heard that Kylo… _Ben_ …has a chance to get a reduced sentence. He needs your help.”

“Why would I help him?” Leia said coldly. “After what he did to our family?”

“Because he deserves for his mother to finally know the truth about what happened,” Rey said firmly, “and you deserve to hear it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did my best to align my depiction of her visit with the rules for the prison Kylo is in- the French M. Robertson Unit, which is a real prison in Texas. I am not 100% sure if that prison allows touching and hand holding but I am claiming artistic license because I know some prisons do. Very special thanks to @Reynardo_red on Twitter for sharing details of the visitation process with me!
> 
> The bit about Texas not providing public defenders for resentencing is true. The real offenders in Texas that were affected by this Supreme Court ruling, Montgomery v. Louisiana, had to pay for their own lawyers or, if they couldn't afford that, depend on people like the Lone Star Justice Alliance who do their work for free and rely on donations. They had six months from the date of the ruling to find representation. I cannot stress enough how wrong this was. 
> 
> Please consider supporting these kinds of organizations, or finding out what you can do to help end mandatory minimum drug sentencing, which fuels the prison industrial complex and keeps beds filed with nonviolent offenders who see their families ripped apart for profit. This is devastating to poor and BIPOC communities. 
> 
> In addition only 20 US states have banned conversion therapy, contact your state or national reps to encourage them to make that a nation wide ban.


	16. In This Together

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There is surely a future hope for you, and your hope will not be cut off- Proverbs 23:18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much as always for your patience while I write this. I appreciate all of you so much for your support and if you haven't done so yet leave a comment to introduce yourself or come and say hi to me on Twitter @Love_andbalance
> 
> I don't think there are any specific TW for this chapter. Everything is stuff has that has been touched on previously in the story so if you've made it this far, then this chapter should be ok for you. If you feel like I missed something, please let me know!

Kylo wasn’t surprised that Leia still refused to speak directly to him- she had never been the type of person that was able to bend easily or often- but he _was_ surprised that she had agreed to pay for lawyers and private investigators. And not just any lawyers- according to Rey, Leia had sparred no expense on hiring the best.

One meeting with his new defense team was all it took for Kylo to believe it.

Amilyn Holdo, the woman who was now tasked with trying to save what was left of his life, was tall and slim- all long limbs and graceful movements beneath a perfectly polished exterior of pressed fabrics and expensive perfume. The impossibly high heels and expertly cut suit jackets reminded him painfully of Leia on her way out the door to a Senate meeting.

It always quickly became apparent, however, that her fragile appearance was not an indication of weakness. Like Leia, she was silk wrapped around a core of steel. She was not unkind, but she offered him no false hope, no platitudes or guarantees that she knew she might not be able to deliver on. Her familiar abrasiveness soothed his nerves.

She knew the stakes, and she knew the odds.

She had been blunt when she told him that she and her team answered directly to Rey as much as they would to him. It was a small thing that caught painfully under his skin because it reminded him just how much his mother didn’t trust him and, even worse, how little she wanted to be involved herself.

She had paid for his defense, but she would rather hand control of it over to Rey, or even to him, before she would bother listening to their reports and discussing strategy with them herself.

He had been wise enough not to mention any of that to Amilyn. She had no patience for anything but single-minded focus on the case.

“You’re sure that you can’t think of anyone else?” she asked him for the third time, her pen tapping restlessly on a legal pad that already had the names and dates of everyone and everything he could remember form the day he was sent to Luke’s to the day his father died in his arms.

The small room used for lawyer’s visits was cold and cramped, with nothing but a few chairs and a small table that was usually nearly invisible beneath heaps of printed records and hastily scribbled notes on legal pads.

He had been in a different room when he had met with the lawyers for his first trial, still housed in the juvenile facility back then, but this one had the same tense atmosphere of quiet desperation.

Unwanted memories dug into his mind, and he rolled his shoulders against the intrusion, trying to focus on the task at hand.

“I’m sure,” he told her defensively. “I’ve been over it in my mind a hundred times since your last visit, and that’s everyone.”

She sighed. “I know you’re trying, and you want out of here, but the chances of us tracking any of these people down is slim and the odds of them being willing to testify…”

“Can’t you just fucking make them? This is my fucking life on the line here.”

“Theoretically?” she asked with a shrug, unfazed by his outburst. “But can I force them to be honest?”

“You think they’d lie,” he said flatly, and she nodded, once again unwilling to sugarcoat her responses.

“I think that what you’ve described to me are multiple scenarios of abuse and illegal activity of the kind that people want to leave behind them,” she said as she flipped through the notes that she had taken. “The more names we have, the greater the chances of finding someone willing to give honest testimony.”

He pushed a hand through his hair, helplessness choking him. “I can’t think of anyone else.”

“That’s okay,” she said, flipping the page of the pad again. “We’ll pass what you’ve given me along to the P.I. along with notes on who I think the most necessary candidates are. After that we’ll just have to wait and see what we come up with.”

“But we’re still filing the paperwork, right? No matter what happens with that?”

“We don’t have much choice. You only have a six-month window to notify the court that you want a resentencing hearing, and it’s more than half gone already. One way or the other, we have to build you the best case we can.”

He fell silent as she wrote, the sound of pen scratching across paper the only sound as the minutes ticked by.

“Do you have any questions for me?” she asked finally, looking up at him patiently as she started to pack her things away. Their time was limited and nearly done for the day.

“How will this be different than the trial? The first one?” He’d avoided asking her during their first several meetings because he wasn’t sure he could handle another trial like the last one. Not when Rey was involved.

“Well, to begin with there won’t be a jury. Resentencing is at the discretion of a judge, so we will be appealing to the court directly.”

He nodded, relieved. He liked the sound of that, it seemed less humiliating than begging for his life to a group of strangers for the second time.

“Other than that, we aren’t arguing your innocence in this case. We are asking the judge to consider the circumstances of the murder and reduce the punishment that you’ve been given. We’ll appeal to the court’s mercy- do everything we can to make you a sympathetic figure. You’re the victim here, and just a kid at the time of the murder. You’re someone who was overcome by the circumstances and unlikely to offend again.”

“Do you believe that?”

“It doesn’t matter what I believe,” she said firmly. “I have a responsibility to defend you no matter what my beliefs are, but in this case, yes, I believe that you deserve to walk out of this prison someday.”

“Why?” He wasn’t sure why it mattered to him so much, just that it did.

“The facts of this case are very straightforward when all of the evidence of abuse and the psychological evaluations are included.” Then she smiled at him and shook her head, obviously bemused, “And if that wasn’t enough- which it would be- I met your girlfriend, and she was very convincing. That kind of devotion doesn’t come from nowhere, especially not with a girl like that. She’s going to make a _great_ lawyer someday.”

“About Rey…Can we keep the media from prying into my personal life? Away from prison records?” His voice spiked, fear setting in as he realized that Rey was on record at the prison for visiting him. The idea of reporters and aggressive paparazzi swarming her house made him sick.

“We’re going to do our best to keep cameras out of the courtroom. That’s the first thing that I’m going to ask for. Your first trial was a mishandled media circus.”

“That’s putting it mildly,” he mumbled, but she continued without acknowledging him.

“There’s always the chance that someone will be willing to leak sensitive information no matter what the court orders,” she said, “but media interest is likely to be much more minimal if they aren’t getting trial footage every day.”

He breathed a quick sigh of relief as she stood up.

“We’re all going to do our best for you,” she told him, “but nobody is fighting for you harder than Rey. She’s not going to get scared off by a few reporters.”

***

The countryside had sprung into new green life since the first time she had been to the prison, the trees bursting with the unfurling buds of leaves that marked the relentless passing of time.

The weeks that had turned winter into spring had also made Rey comfortable in her visits and the drive to see him had become so familiar that it was almost meditative, allowing her thoughts to roam and ponder and settle on what they might discuss or how she was feeling that particular week. Her arrival was just as uneventful, the barbed wire and the dogs and the clanging of the doors nothing more than background noise.

It terrified her when she stopped to think through the implications of her acclimation.

She knew the route to the prison, the names of the guards, the smell and sounds of the visitation room so well that she had started to dream about them- her mind replaying the familiar process until she finally made it inside and saw Kylo as an old man with his hair gray and his back bent with age.

In the nightmare, a lifetime has passed, and she knew that he would never leave his cage- destined to die behind the walls that kept him prisoner. He still smiled when he saw her, his face wreathed with wrinkles, and she choked back her tears because she didn’t want him to see how badly her heart was broken that they had been denied a life together.

She prayed with clenched fists every day that she would never have to see him like that outside the panicked projections of her mind… and she did not tell Kylo.

He greeted her now with a happy hug and she dug her fingers into his back greedily, pressing down hard on the guilt that she felt for keeping secrets from him and offering him nothing but reassuring smiles.

Even if it meant keeping some things to herself, she was unwilling to burden him with her fears when she knew he had so many of his own.

After a subtle and intimate brush of her fingers over his wrist, she twined her fingers with his and took in his appearance as they sat down at the nearest table. His was as handsome as ever, his smile as genuine, but his eyes were shadowed with dark circles.

She knew Amilyn had been to see him already this week and she had suspicions that having to retell the story so many times had brought _his_ nightmares back.

“How was the drive?” he asked, already rubbing circles on the back of her hand with his thumb. He was always touching her, like he was trying as hard as she was to soak every bit of their visits in through the skin where it would live forever, an indelibly etched memory.

“Uneventful,” she said with a smile. “It’s not as stressful as it used to be.” He nodded but he said nothing else and she frowned, sensing an undercurrent of something dark that made her uneasy. “What’s wrong?”

“I spoke to Amilyn,” he said quietly.

“She came to visit you on Wednesday, right?”

“Yeah, she did. We went over the witness list again, and she said she wanted to prioritize certain people, make sure we got the ones that would hold the most weight with the jury.”

“That makes sense,” she said slowly. It felt like he was going somewhere with this, but she wasn’t sure where.

“What if they don’t find anyone?” His hand tightened on hers as until it was almost painful as he spoke a portion of her own fears aloud, and he looked at her like he needed her to inject hope directly into his veins or he might fall apart.

“Kylo, it’s going to be okay. We’ve come so much further already than we thought would ever be possible.”

“Yes, but now it _is_ possible, and I can’t stop thinking about the life I want to give you. I don’t want you to be alone for the rest of your life because I’m stuck in here and I don’t want you being harassed by reporters or suffering through a trial listening to people talk about the fucked up shit that happened to me.”

Rey sighed and pressed a hand to her eyes, willing back the tears there before he could see them. She knew he loved her, that he wanted her, but right now he needed her hope more than he needed anything else.

It had been her hope that had gotten them this far and it would be her hope that got them the rest of the way. It had been her hope, after all, that had finally swayed his mother.

Rey’s plea had been passionate, appealing to Leia as a woman and a mother, as a politician with an eye for justice, to give him a chance to tell his side of the story, to prove that what he had done had not been an act of cold blooded cruelty. Leia was a hard woman, difficult to convince and clearly in possession of a stiff moral code, but she had eventually bent enough to allow them at least an opportunity.

It had bought them only one chance, and they couldn’t afford to waste it in fear and self-pity.

Amilyn had told her plainly, when she had arranged to meet her a little coffee shop just off campus, that this process would be long and exhaustive, that it would push her to the limits of her emotions, with one day bringing the highest of hopes and the next the dark certainty of failure and despair.

They would need as much support from others as they could find, but mostly they would need each other. Rey was willing to dig into herself to find as much of it, as much strength, as she could. She was prepared to give him everything she had.

“Hey,” she crooned, hating the guards and the rules for preventing her from pulling him into her arms, from running her fingers through the soft waves of his hair and kissing his anxiety away. “We can’t think like that.”

“I didn’t care so much the first time because I thought my life was over anyway, but now I have you and I have a fucking life waiting for me.” She started to speak but his head whipped up and she was caught in the tumult of his eyes. “Do you want to know the worst part, though? Even now she isn’t here, and she doesn’t care.”

“Who?”

“My mother,” he said, surprising her as the words tore into her to lodge somewhere primal, nestling into her heart. He hadn’t spoken at all about Leia since he had found out about the lawyers and she been reluctant to bring it up, afraid of upsetting him.

“Kylo, I’m so sorry,” she said, squeezing his hand and wiping away the tears that she could no longer hold back. “I tried to get her to talk to you, but she said she wanted to hear what the P.I.’s had to say first.”

“Of course, she did,” he said bitterly.

“She talked about you and your father,” Rey told him softly, trying to soothe the hurt she could hear in his voice. “She’s not a soft woman, obviously, but I think she loved you both.”

“And _Luke_? Did she talk about _him_?”

“Yes,” Rey admitted, still unsure how much she should say on the subject of Luke. “I got the impression that they were close, and she felt very betrayed by the idea that he might have hurt you.”

“They _were_ really close,” Kylo said, “and my dad, too. That’s why Luke was able to get away with so much. People trusted him. They _still_ trust him.”

“Amilyn and my dad already told me how popular he was. It looks like he dropped out of the public eye around the time your father died, but he was a living legend in the spiritual community. “

“Convincing people that he wasn’t as perfect as they thought he was is going to be almost impossible.”

We’re going to be taking on a big legacy,” she admitted, “but we _can_ do this.”

“I just don’t want you to get hurt,” he said. “Not by any of this.”

“I know you don’t, but we are in this together, no matter what happens.”

***

“How was the visit?”

Rey sighed, pausing with her foot paused on the bottom stair. She had thought she might be able to get by without her father seeing her, but she hadn’t been so lucky.

“It was fine,” she said, turning to smile at him as she took another step up the stairs. “Just going over some stuff that we had talked to his lawyer about.

Pastor Johnson nodded absently, still rooted to the spot in the doorway to the dining room. He had been waiting for her to come home, she realized. He hadn’t done that since she was in high school, when he needed to talk to her about her mother’s illness. It was usually an indication that he had something serious to say.

“Can you come in here, please?” he asked, confirming her suspicions, and tapping his fingers nervously on his thigh.

“Sure,” she said, turning away from the stairs and taking a few hesitant steps to follow him into the dining room, where he sat at the table, a cup of coffee sitting untouched in front of him.

Kaydel wouldn’t be home from class for another two hours, and the usual buffer that she come to provide that protected them from conflict now missing. Rey had a sinking feeling that this conversation was going to be the one that she had been specifically avoiding for the last three months.

“We haven’t had much time to really talk since everything started with Kylo and Kaydel came to stay with us,” he said. “Not since the unfortunate disagreement we had at Christmas.”

“No, we haven’t,” she agreed. She hugged her arms around her middle, anxiety already prickling beneath the skin and making her thoughts buzz uncomfortably.

He swallowed and shifted his hands restlessly on the coffee cup. “I was just wondering how school was going and everything with Kylo? I guess, if I’m being honest, I just wondered if things were still the same as they were the last time we spoke?”

“You want to know if I’m still planning to apply to law school and if I am still in a relationship with Kylo?” She knew her tone was blunter than he would have preferred but she didn’t think she felt _too_ sorry for him when sighed and looked away.

“Yes, that’s what I was wondering,” he confirmed.

“I am,” she said simply. “I love my classes this semester and I love Kylo.” Her father’s face was tired as he nodded and she relented enough to add, “I know that Mrs. Nu has been causing problems and starting rumors about our family because of my relationship with him and I _am_ sorry that you have had to deal with that.”

He waved a hand to dismiss her concerns. “I’m not blaming you for that. I’ve tried so hard to reach her and I know she’s being extremely difficult but…”

“It’s hard to give up on one of the flock,” she said understandingly. 

“Exactly,” he said approvingly. “I know there’s always hope.”

That hope had once kept him from returning a wide eyes and terrified little girl, so she patted his hand affectionately, suddenly determined to work out the tension between them now that the conversation had begun.

“I know that you wanted me to follow the path that God had laid for me” she told him with an understanding smile, “and that you always thought that it would be the same path as Mom, but isn’t. I know that hurts you, but I can’t change it. I can’t change what God created me to be.”

“Is that what you think? That I want to change you?” He dropped his head into his hands, shoulders slumping.

“Isn’t it?” asked, bewildered when he lifted his head from his hands, eyes red rimmed and cheeks wet.

“I want you to be _happy_ , Rey. Happy and safe and loved. I know you have feelings for Kylo and after everything you’ve told me, I hate what happened to him, but if he never gets out…” He took a deep breath. “You’re going to be heartbroken. Heartbroken and alone. I never wanted you to be alone again, not ever, but with Kylo and the job…”

“Dad…”

“It’s not that I don’t think you can do anything you want to- I _know_ you can- but I don’t want you to put so much of yourself into the career or into waiting for Kylo that you miss out on other things in life.”

“I understand…”

He shook his head, his face broken and anguished. “You don’t understand. I don’t think you remember what things were like when you first came to us. You were so touch starved, so scared of even being in a room by yourself, that we couldn’t even leave you alone. I never wanted you to be lonely again- I wanted you to have a family, Rey, and someone to grow old with.”

“I know,” she told him. “And I am fighting to have that. I am fighting for the person I want to be with.”

“What if he hurts you?”

“What if someone else does? There’s never a guarantee. What if I had married Poe and had a bunch of babies and then he left me and ran off with a stripper?”

He laughed bleakly, recalling the story she was talking about. A pastor in the next county had done exactly that a few years before, leaving his young wife brokenhearted and alone with three children to raise.

“I always wanted to find a man just like you and somehow I did,” she continued, patting his hand at his shocked expression. “He’s got a difficult past, but I promise you that I know what I good man looks like, what love looks like because you and Mama showed me that all my life. He listens to me, he cares about me, he supports me in everything I do. He looks at me like you looked at Mama, and that’s how I know it’s right.”

He pulled her in for a hug, and she hugged him back, her cheek resting in his shoulder.

“I trust him, Daddy, and I am asking you to trust me. Please?”

He nodded, exhaling a shaky breath. “You’re sure that you can be happy? That this is the life that you want for yourself.”

She sat beside him, her cheek pressed to his shoulder and her hand on his.

“I’m sure.”


	17. A Day That Costs Us a Piece of Our Lives

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When you pass through the waters, I will be with you - Isaiah 43:2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't think there's anything terribly specific that needs to be tagged in this chapter but, as always, if you feel that I missed something please let me know. 
> 
> I would like to give special thanks to aurorareylo here on ao3 and @DarthIravox on Twitter for helping me get through this chapter and being amazing betas. Their support, and all of your comments, have been essential to keeping this going.

_Summer 2016_

The heat of summer was inescapable and clung to Rey’s skin with the smell of sweat and sunscreen. She tugged on the hem of the rainbow t-shirt she was wearing, desperately unsticking it from her stomach and hoping to stir a breeze. Finn and Rose looked nearly equally as miserable, hot and wilting as soon as they had stepped out of the car and now dodging determinedly through the swirling press of the crowd. The morning news had predicted the high was going to be nearly 100˚, the heat index sitting at a sweltering 102˚.

“Rey,” Kaydel screamed, running up to hug first her, then Rose and Finn. She was beaming, face vibrant and nose sunburnt as the crowd pressed in around them. “I’m so glad you all came.”

“Wouldn’t miss it,” Rey assured her, looking curiously at the girl that was holding tight Kay’s hand.

She was shorter than Rey by several inches, but she made up for it in sheer vibrancy- the glint of silver shone from a piercing in her nose and her long hair was dyed electric pink. Her grin was fierce, slightly on edge like she wasn’t sure what sort of welcome she might receive.

To her, Rey and the others were Kaydel’s church friends and a note of dull pain echoed in Rey’s heart as she remembered what Kylo had taught her. Faith was not always the guarantee of compassion that she had once thought it was. 

“Or the chance to meet your girlfriend, _finally_ ,” Rey said, offering her hand and her warmest smile. “I’m Rey, this is Rose and Finn.”

“Alison has been a little nervous about meeting everyone,” Kaydel admitted, leaning in to kiss her girlfriend’s cheek. “But I convinced her.”

“We are so happy to meet you,” Rose said, “You have made Kay happier than I think I’ve ever seen her.”

At that Alison smiled back at them, some of her tension draining away. “Nice to meet you, too. Is this your first time at Pride?” she asked, voice barely carrying over the noise as she looked curiously at all of them, including the whole group in her question.

“Yeah,” Rose acknowledged, “And it’s great!” She turned to Kay and gestured at the shirt she wore, the rainbow flag glittering under the words ‘Love Wins’. “If someone had asked you last summer if you’d be here like this in just a year- happy and in love- would you have believed it?”

Kaydel shook her head. “I don’t think I would have believed that I _ever_ would have been able to do this. My parents are so awful, and I couldn’t see a future beyond them.”

“You’re better than them,” Alison said fiercely. “They didn’t deserve you.”

“No, they didn’t and that’s why we had to come and support Kay,” Finn said with a grin. “She’s been through a lot and it’s good to see her smiling again. I’m glad she has you.”

Alison’s face flushed with happiness as Kay leaned in for another kiss.

Rey smiled, her heart full at Kaydel’s obvious blossoming, but her gaze slid from one happy couple to the other and the space between her own fingers felt empty.

Later, when she was alone, there were tears on her cheeks and nothing but her fingers to fill the ache inside her. The echo of Kylo’s voice, hot with desire, echoed in her mind, but the space beside her in the bed was as cold as always.

She was alone, lonely and the hole in her life where Kylo should have been was becoming an ache, a constant pain that had settled deep in her chest. Each beat of her heart was a reminder of the part of her that was missing, each breath heavy with the weight of the passage of time, but how could she admit that to anyone, especially him?

It felt disloyal to him that she felt hollow inside when it wasn’t his fault that he couldn’t be with her. She bit into the skin of her wrist to stifle the cries when she peaked, sobs mingling with breathless pants that she realized afterward had been just the muffled, whimpered sound of his name.

Her voice broke on the phone as she finally spilled out her shame and the envy she held even for those she loved best, who deserved happiness the most. That happiness was a bitter reminder that made her hands shake and her breath stick in her throat. Her sobs were quiet, and his words were gentle. She wiped her tears as his promises cradled her and wrapped her in the surety of love. 

He didn’t blame her for how she felt, but she blamed herself.

***

Kylo watched as Amilyn settled into the seat on the other side of the table, her face set as she spread the papers in her arms out for him to look at. There was at least an attempt made to keep the air condition working in this part of the prison so the suit she was wearing was only slightly wilted.

He glanced over it, familiar names jumping off the page to choke him.

“What’s this?”

The P.I. report,” she explained, pressing a perfectly manicured nail to the first page.

“He was able to make contact with Mitaka, as well as Vicrul, Ushar, and Cardo. They’ve agreed to testify.”

He swallowed. “The others?”

She averted her eyes. “Ap’ lek died the same year you were convicted. Shooting. Kuruk committed suicide a few years later and no one can find Trudgen. He’s simply disappeared.”

Kylo nodded, unsurprised but heartsore. “Snoke,” he said. He had little doubt that whatever happened to Trudgen had been unpleasant and irreversible. “None of the others from Luke’s?”

“Wealthy families and all that,” she said quietly. “Most them won’t even respond to his inquiries, or they’ve slapped him with legal orders to force him to keep his distance.”

He nodded, again unsurprised. Wasn’t keeping the family reputation intact the reason most of them had been sent to Luke to begin with? Still…

“Bazine?” he asked, unable to shake the hope that maybe, after all these years, she had forgiven him.

Amilyn shook her head and he looked away at the unexpected sympathy in her eyes. “She was the first to file for him to desist his attempts to contact her. I know she was key to a lot of this, the final straw that drove you out and into Snoke’s clutches, but we can’t get to her.”

“What now?” He sucked his bottom lip between his teeth, worrying the soft flesh with his teeth as he rapped uneasily on the table with his knuckle. Disappointment and hurt feelings wouldn’t help him get out of here, it wouldn’t help him get to Rey.

“We file the paperwork for the resentencing hearing, and then we wait.” Amilyn leaned back in her chair, regarding him calmly over the expanse of the table.

He nodded wordlessly. There was nothing else he could do, nothing he had been able to do for years.

Just wait.

In his dreams, the image of Rey’s hazel eyes, brimming with love as she held his hand in the visitation room, bled into another, darker brown. These eyes weren’t soft, they didn’t belong to a woman that loved him and was hungry with the urge to press her body against his- instead, the woman they belonged to was angry and wounded. She blamed him, but not more than he blamed himself.

His heart believed he wouldn’t let anyone hurt Rey the way he had let them hurt Bazine, but then he opened his eyes and remembered where he was. His mind knew that he couldn’t protect Rey, either, and he wondered if that was all he’d ever have- a lifetime of failure, doomed to hurt the ones he loved the most.

In the morning, he called her and let the steady certainty of her voice chase away the nightmares.

***

_Fall 2016_

Mrs. Nu smirked over the rim of her cup of cider as she approached, and Rey set her teeth against what she was sure was going to be another unpleasant conversation. It had been awhile, Mrs. Nu had been mostly quiet the past few months, since she’d realized that nothing had come of her previous gossip.

They had started to believe that _maybe_ she’d given up and Rey had been too busy taking a full course load of classes to pay much attention to her anyway, but the sudden glint in her eye meant she must have found some new bit of information to torment them with. 

“Rey, dear,” she said silkily, standing just a bit too close so she could lean in conspiratorially, “you look positively exhausted. Those classes of yours sure do seem to be taking a toll on you.”

Rey opened her mouth, rage coiling at the tip of tongue, but the other woman flashed a quick smile and plunged on without waiting for an answer.

“Have you heard the good news? Mr. Dameron is engaged. It seems he found _quite_ a sweet and God-fearing young woman in Zorri and I was just sure that you would want to know since the two of you were such good friends!”

“I hadn’t heard,” Rey said coldly. “I’m sure he’ll be very happy.”

Mrs. Nu gestured across the room to where Rose was standing, talking quietly to Kaydel and the other younger women of the Bible group. “Happy endings do seem to be going around, don’t they? I can’t wait for wedding season in the summer, can you? Rose is going to make a stunning bride.”

“Yes, she is,” Rey agreed. “Finn loves her very much.”

“Of course, it is a shame, isn’t it? That you don’t have the same opportunities. How are things going with you and that man you’re writing to?”

Rey glared at her, good sense and courtesy falling away in her irritation. “Kylo is fine. Better than fine, actually, he’s just waiting now for a resentencing hearing that might let him come home someday.”

Mrs. Nu faltered for a moment, and Rey felt a vicious wave of satisfaction settle over her- one that was quickly followed by a deep and unshakeable dread. Nothing was more dangerous in Mrs. Nu’s hands than information, and Re was sure that bitterness had just goaded her into admitting something that she was sure to pay for later.

“Well, then, perhaps someday we’ll get to celebrate your engagement after all,” the older woman said, glancing at Rey with her lip curling into the barest imitation of a smile.

With that she sauntered away, leaving Rey standing with her lips pressed together in a thin line of regret. She’d fallen for the bait, since, _of course_ , Mrs. Nu wasn’t actually happy for Rose and Finn’s engagement in the first place, she had just been looking for any reason to make Rey feel inadequate.

And it had worked.

“Is she bothering you again?” Rose asked when Rey made her way across the room to stand beside her. Rey knew she had been surreptitiously watching the conversation and her voice was worried, but she just wiped a tear and leaned into Rose’s shoulder; her body tucking into the solace of her best friend’s embrace.

The gleam of the diamond on Rose’s hand was small and Rey knew they were planning on moving into a cramped apartment just off campus after the wedding, but it was everything she wanted. It was humiliating that she had let that push her into making such a careless mistake.

She had known that this was the cost of her choices, but she hadn’t known that it would hurt so much.

She held Kylo extra hard at the next visit, clinging to him and soaking in the strength of his love her for so long that the guards frowned at her in disapproval when she finally released him. When she looked up into his face, the cherished line of his nose and the warm depth of his eyes, her smile was fragile but determined.

If there was a price that she wasn’t willing to pay to know what his lips felt like on her own, to know the feeling of his fingers on her skin or the way morning light would look on his sleeping face, she had once again forgotten it.

_***_

“Do you ever think about what you’re going to do if you actually get out of here someday?”

The question surprised him, coming from Hux, and he sighed, looking at the wall of pictures that held Rey’s smiling face.

“All the time,” he said honestly. “I just want to be with Rey.”

Hux nodded from his position on the bunk opposite. “More than that, though. What about jobs, places to live? I’ve only got a few more years in this shithole and I don’t know what I’m gonna do when it’s over.”

“You’ve got your brother waiting for you on the outside, right?” Kylo knew he did, that Hux had landed himself here when he found his father brutally beating the kid the way he had once beaten Hux. His cellmate had hit the old man a few times in the head with a baseball bat, then driven his brother to the hospital and waited for the police to show up.

Not that Kylo blamed him, what else was he supposed to do?

From what he understood, Brendal Hux had never been quite the same, destined to spend the rest of his days in a specialized care facility, and the little brother had ended up in foster care. Hux had pled down from attempted murder to aggravated assault so he could get out before the kid was grown.

“How am I supposed to take care of him with this on my record?”

It was the first real piece of humanity that Kylo had seen from him and shook his head. “I don’t know, man, but I know you’ll figure it out.”

“Do you worry about Rey? Taking care of her and being normal after all this?”

Kylo blew out a hard breath. “Every day.”

Hux nodded again, his face twisted in contempt. “This place just fucks up. Worse than when we came in, you know? Fuck this system.”

Kylo was still thinking about that when called Rey later that day, as he listened to her ramble on excitedly about Rose’s wedding. Something small, she said, and they were making most of the decorations themselves. Kaydel had already moved out and into a small place with Alison and they thought they could probably get into the same apartment complex.

She was missing out on all of it, he knew. She visited him, went to school, did homework- piling classes on, more than a full-time schedule, to keep herself busy. She was talking about getting a job in top of that, and he sighed.

He wasn’t even out and he had already ruined her normal life, what was it going to do to her if he actually got to be a real part of her life some day? The question kept him up at night, haunting the edges of his dreams.

He knew he wasn’t the only one struggling. There were dark circles under her eyes every time he saw her, and he wanted to kiss them way, to hold her so he could make sure she was sleeping at night.

***

_Winter 2016_

Jannah grinned when Rey wrapped her in a tight hug.

“I can’t believe you didn’t visit for summer or fall break,” Rey said with a pout. “I think Finn was starting to worry that you’d forgotten about him.”

Finn shook his head from his place at the table, picking aimlessly at a piece of pie. “Nope, she couldn’t ever forget me. She loves me too much, isn’t that right?”

Jannah made a face and they all laughed. “I wanted to visit sooner but so much was going on. Next semester is my last before graduation and there was a great internship over the summer and then fall break, I went to meet Sean’s family for Thanksgiving.”

“Oh?” Rey smiled at Jannah’s boyfriend, trapped in conversation with Mrs. Kanata when he’d gone to fetch Jannah her own piece of pie. They’d come to visit at the Bible group because between school and Rey’s new job she didn’t have time for anything else. “Visiting both families over the holidays, huh? Sounds like you two have gotten serious.”

“Not as serious as little Finny over here,” Jannah said, clucking her tongue as she eyed Rose’s engagement ring with a teasing grin. “Engaged already.”

Finn shrugged, his hand resting on Rose’s knee. “She’s the only one I ever wanted. Why drag it out?”

“So romantic,” Jannah said with a laugh and Rose wrinkled her nose until Finn kissed her sweetly, soothing the irritation from her face.

Sean returned with Jannah’s pie, a neat slice of cherry that she took with a smile and a kiss of her own. “Maybe Finn isn’t wrong,” he said, nuzzling gently into her cheek. “Why wait? Big party, pretty dress, plus that wedding night, right?”

Jannah snorted. “How would that be different from any other night?”

“It would be _official_ ,” he said with a grin.

“I wonder if that makes it hotter?” Rose asked, shooting Finn a suggestive look that made him blush and Rey shift uncomfortably, averting her eyes.

“Sorry, Rey,” Rose said Rey smiled tightly trying to ignore her own flaming cheeks.

“It’s fine,” she said. “I mean, I already knew you two were…well, I guess all of you are, right?” She picked at a stray thread on the hem of her sweater, trying to avoid the pity she knew would be in their eyes. “It’s okay, though, I don’t mind you talking about it in front of me.”

“You still have a chance,” Jannah said, wrapping an arm around her shoulder and leaning her head against Rey’s. “He might get out someday and then you two can fuck enough to make up for all that lost time.”

Rey laughed, breathless and wide eyed as Rose clapped a hand over her mouth to stifle her own giggle. “I guess we could,” she said. “I want to, it’s just…”

“Just?”

“It’s just…” she hesitated, picking at her thread again. She’d never discussed this part of her relationship with Kylo before. “We talk about it so often and there’s so much _expectation_. What if he’s disappointed?”

“Rey, honey, he’s so in love with you…”

“Yeah, he is but he’s…well, he’s had sex before. He’s been with a lot of people and I don’t know anything.” It poured out of her and she looked at them, swallowing down the vulnerability that sat on her chest, threatening to smother her.

“He was so young when he went to prison” Finn said, “I doubt he was with that many people.”

“He _was_ ,” Rey insisted. “When he ran away- when he was living with Snoke- those women…they paid to be with him.”

“That’s awful,” Jannah said, shaking her head, “he was so young and what they did to him was wrong. I don’t think that’s anything like what he has with you.”

“No, I know that. Well, at least, part of me does,” Rey said, looking at Jannah with a soft plea for understanding. “But there was a girl before that, too, when he was at Luke’s.”

“You don’t have to be the first to be the one that matters,” Jannah reassured her. “He hasn’t complained about anything yet, had he?”

Rose looked at her curiously. “Oh? What has he had to complain about?”

Rey bit her lip hard, the slight tang of blood welling up to flood the tip of her tongue. “Just some letters and, uh, phone calls.”

“ _Sexy_ phone calls, though, right?” Jannah asked. “Like we talked about before?”

“Wait, you’ve been having phone sex?” Finn sat forward, scanning Rey’s face for evidence, and then whistling low at the sheer embarrassment that she knew he found there.

“Not exactly,” she hedged. “I mean, he has to sit at the phones so it’s not really private. And they’re sort of recording the calls, so you never know if someone’s listening.”

Jannah nodded. “Hot, right? I mean even if it isn’t _exactly_ phone sex, it’s not exactly PG-13, either.”

“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me about this,” Rose said. “You two have been together for so long now and you never said anything.”

Rey shrugged, keeping her eyes fixed on the bare ring finger of her left hand. “It’s embarrassing,” she admitted. “Too intimate and not nearly intimate enough. Like it’s too desperate of a thing to be doing, but it’s all we have.”

“And you feel guilty,” Rose said, pining the source of Rey’s discomfort in a few words. “You know that we’re not supposed to…”

“Yes,” Rey cut in. “We aren’t supposed to and even if I do want to marry him…”

“We’re not supposed to supposed to be sleeping together right now, either,” Finn reminded her. “You don’t judge us, and we aren’t going to judge you. We’d be doing the same thing if we were in your place.”

Rose nodded, her hand in Finn’s. “Absolutely. You need that connection to him, maybe now more than ever. And when he does get out, you two will do just fine. He isn’t going to be disappointed in you.”

Rey smiled tightly, but the seed of her doubt remained.

***

Kylo got the official date on a Tuesday, his world fixing itself to a moment in the summertime that would determine everything about his future…and Rey’s.

She was calmer when he told her than he expected, and he knew she was absolutely focused on making sure that he stayed hopeful.

“It’s sooner than we thought,” she said. “This summer! It could have taken another year.. That’s a _whole year_ that we don’t have to worry about. We’ve come so far.”

“Every day I spend in here is a day we can’t get back- a day that costs us a piece of our lives,” he said, the days between him and the hearing stretching out like an eternity. So much waiting, so much time lost.

“It’s worth it,” she told him. “Every day that I spend waiting for you is worth it.”

He held tight to those words as he spent days staring at the notice- the date and time of the hearing finally written down in black and white- and he thought about calling his mother.

He didn’t.

***

_Spring 2017_

Kylo was used to Rey’s visits.

He still counted the seconds between them, but she had come every possible weekend and he had stopped getting nervous a long time ago. He knew she would be there; knew she would smile at him and link her fingers with his and they would have a few hours where love mattered more than the trials they faced.

The guards slid him knowing looks, and he knew that some of them have probably been on enough letter reading duty that they knew exactly what kind of thoughts Rey had about him, but he’d learned to ignore them.

It felt different when her father came.

It had taken her months to convince him, to set a day and have him sit in the seat beside her as she made the drive.

This time the guards’ knowing grins made him clench his fists before she stepped into the first hug that he was allowed to give her. The idea that they would embarrass her in front of the man who had raised her infuriated him.

Rey didn’t acknowledge them, she never did, and he followed her to the table they usually sat at and tried to turn his focus to the man who sat on the other side of her.

Pastor Johnson looked exactly the way that Kylo had expected him to- neatly dressed, hair combed just the right way, glasses settled sensibly at the bridge of his nose. He didn’t have the edge of cruelty in his eyes that Luke had always had, and the laugh lines at his eyes seemed genuine, but he still frowned at the eagerness Rey displayed for Kylo’s touch, the easy and casual way that she wrapped her hand around his, her fingers slotting comfortably between his own.

She smiled brightly, ignoring the palpable tension in the air as her father stared him down. It was not the way he would have preferred to meet the parent of the woman he loved, but she was insistent that she wanted them to meet before the hearing.

“So,” she said, cutting into the silence and looking from one of them to the other. “Kylo this is my dad. Dad this is Kylo.”

He reached out a hand and Pastor Johnson took it, giving it a brief, perfunctory shake.

“Nice to meet you finally,” Kylo said, his gaze shifting from the man to the daughter. He knew this was important to her, and his personal feelings about God and religion aside, he wanted to make her happy.

“Rey’s quite fond of you,” her dad said in return- an explanation for his presence more than a return of the greeting. “She’s argued very persuasively on your behalf, but I hope you understand that her happiness, her future, is my top priority.”

Kylo pulled his eyes away from Rey, met the blunt gaze of the man who clearly didn’t approve of him. “She’s everything,” he said flatly. “There’s nothing I wouldn’t give, nothing I wouldn’t do for her.”

“And if you have to spend the rest of your life in here?”

“Dad,” Rey said quickly, shaking her head.

“Then I’ll be here for her until she doesn’t want me anymore, but I won’t try to stop her if she decides she wants to move on. What’s between us…it’s for Rey, it’s always been for Rey.”

Her father didn’t speak much after that and Kylo knew he was being judged, his every action being evaluated, but he wasn’t worried. He knew every expression that she made, every shift in her body language. The subtle flow of unspoken communication in the flick of a glance or the caress of a thumb came as naturally to him as breathing now.

“You really do love her, don’t you?” Pastor Johnson asked. Rey’s seat at the table was empty as she made her customary trip to the vending machine.

“Yes, I really do.”

“You wouldn’t have been my first choice for her, but I would have been wrong.” Her dad sighed, casting his eyes heavenward. “She’s never looked at anyone the way she looks at you and it’s pretty clear to me that her happiness is your first priority.”

“She’s my only priority.” Kylo looked at him, his gaze unflinching. “I mean that.”

“Well, I guess you had better call me Rian.”

When Rey returned, laughing at the absurdly high mountain of snacks in her arms, there was no tension between them, and when they left, her dad’s handshake was warm and friendly.

“I know you’re soured on God and faith” he said, “and truth be told after what you’ve been through it’s hard to blame you, but I’ll be praying for you, for what it’s worth.”

Kylo swallowed hard. “Thanks,I guess it can’t hurt and I heard about what you did for that friend of Rey’s. You’re a better man than my uncle ever was.”

Rey’s arms around his waist were extra tight when she hugged him goodbye, and he saw the tears she tried to hide as she walked away.

He didn’t think he’d ever done anything more important than making it so that the two most important men in her life were united in their understanding of how much she meant to both of them.

***

Rey shouldn’t have been there, and she knew it.

Amilyn had made it clear that Bazine didn’t want to be contacted, that she had put legal barriers in place that prevent them from speaking to her, from asking her to help. Rey had been obedient, closing off the possibility that they could reach her for nearly a year.

But the date of the resentencing loomed, large and final and desperate in her mind, until she broke. If there was a chance that she could reach Bazine, as she had reached Leia, then it would be worth the consequences to herself for breaking the order.

Bazine’s family was old money, and Rey was surprised when she pulled up to the address in a town several hours away from her own and found that the home she lived in was not a mansion, not a proud and cold building that was aloof in its sheer size, but a quaint two story house not that different from Rey’s own childhood home. The street was neat and tidy, leaves and blooms barely blossoming in the well-tended yards.

A dog barked inside when she knocked and then the door opened, and she was standing in the warming spring air and staring with wide eyes at the woman she had come to see. Bazine looked not terribly unlike her, she thought. A slim brunette with soft features, but her eyes were brown, dark pools of rich deep tones that held experiences that belied her youth.

They reminded Rey of Kylo, and the heaviness he carried.

“You’re Bazine,” she blurted, and the other woman smiled slightly in surprise. Rey rushed on before she could speak. “I’m Rey Johnson. You don’t know me, but I was hoping I could have a moment of your time. I’m friends with Kylo, uh, I mean Ben. You would have known him as Ben, back then. Ben Solo?”

Bazine frowned and crossed her arms over her chest protectively. “I told that private investigator that I don’t want anything to do with this. I have a life now- a husband and a child. I don’t need all of this shit from my past getting pulled back out into the light and examined. I moved on.”

Rey nodded, holding one out beseechingly before Bazine could close the door. “I understand that what I am asking is a lot, but all Ben wants is a chance at a life.”

Bazine’s eyes narrowed on her face and some of what she was feeling inside must have shown there. “You’re his friend, huh?”

Rey blushed, heat rushing painfully over her cheeks. “I love him,” she said honestly. “So much.”

“Yeah?” Bazine flicked a glance at Rey’s face again and then shook her head. “Well, come in then and explain to me how the hell that happened when he’s been in prison for the last twelve years. You look like a damn baby standing out there, so I know you weren’t with him when he went in. They’d have had your face all over the news if you had been.”

Rey stiffened. “I’m not a baby. I’m nineteen and I’m in college.”

Bazine smiled as she settled at the kitchen table, waving a hand for Rey to sit, too. “That sounds like a baby to me, but you’re a fierce little thing. That’s the kind that always appealed to Ben so I can see how he’d like you.”

Rey took a breath and explained how her relationship with Kylo had begun, how hopeful she had been when they realized that they might have a chance to actually be together, how hard the past year had been on both of them.

“You really do love him,” Bazine said when she’d finished. “I can see it all over you. I’m glad- he deserves to be loved.”

Rey nodded, nibbling the skin of her bottom lip nervously. “Did you? Love him?”

“As much as I could at fifteen,” Bazine said, but the look in her eyes was haunted, and Rey could see it, the ache that she kept deep inside, the place where there was a wound that still wept. “I was emotional- out of control- as a teenager. I landed at Luke’s and that just made is worse.”

Rey nodded. “He told me about what you all went through.”

Heat flashed in Bazine’s eyes, but she shrugged. “He’s got as much right as any of us to share it, I guess.”

“I can’t imagine what it was like,” Rey said softly, reaching out to lay her hand over the other woman’s. Bazine’s tightened on it, seeking comfort as she confronted memories that they both knew she would have preferred to forget. “The truth is that none of that should have happened to you, to either of you. This is a small chance to help make it right.”

“I told him I hated him, the last time I saw him.” Bazine looked up, a single tear sliding unnoticed down her cheek as she chewed nervously on her thumbnail. “That I would never forgive him for what had been done to me, even though it wasn’t his fault and there was nothing he could have done to stop it.”

They both turned as Bazine’s son clattered down the stairs, arms full of toys. He waved curiously and smiled, one tooth missing in the front. Bazine loved him and Rey could see that in her eyes, as she could see the sadness that years of distance could not erase.

“Ben wanted children, did you know that?” She looked at Rey, shoulders slumped. “Even then, as young as we were, he wanted a real family. The kind where love was just given, and you knew that they’d always be there for you.”

Rey squeezed her hand, but she didn’t interrupt.

“I love my husband,” Bazine continued, nodding slightly to herself in a silent confirmation of her own assessment. “I love my son, too, and I wouldn’t undo the life I had to live to get here.” There was a spark in her eyes, the rage that she’s concealed so well until now. “But someone needs to know what that bastard did, and I guess I need to make up for blaming the wrong person all those years ago. Ben was just a kid- it wasn’t his fault any more than it was mine and he was half mad with grief and rage when he took off. What happened to his dad was a tragedy, but it was Luke’s fault more than probably anybody’s.”

Bazine’s tears left scars on Rey’s heart, shallow ones that she thought must be in the same shape as the ones that Kylo wore, though nowhere near as deep. She left with tears on her own cheeks, her hand sore from the grip that the older woman had on it when she agreed to testify if Rey would go with her to the courtroom.

This woman had Kylo’s heart years before she knew him, years before she was old enough to even understand what love meant. Maybe it wouldn’t have lasted, but what they had made together should not have been taken from them by force. The unfairness of that, the damage that it had left behind, would never completely heal.

She understood, finally, that even if Kylo came home any happiness that they found together afterward would still be built on the back of someone else’s pain.


	18. I Love You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Whoever takes a human life shall surely be put to death- Leviticus 24:17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We have finally made it to the resentencing hearing! I know everyone is excited for the things to come but please make sure that you read the author's notes at the beginning of each new chapter, since after this we truly begin to unpack everything that Kylo has gone through. 
> 
> TW/CW for this chapter- brief mentions of murder and graphic violence
> 
> As always, all of you and your wonderful comments are what keep me motivated and coming back to this story so thank you so much! And special thanks to aurorareylo for beta-ing this chapter for me!

_Summer 2017_

Rey’s fingers were white at the knuckle when her father parked the car in the courthouse parking lot. It was crowded with cars, each bearing people that had come for a variety of tasks- marriage licenses and parking tickets, jury duty and drug court. The truly unlucky ones were here for reasons far more serious, accusations with consequences most people would find unimaginable. Some of the people who had come to watch those proceedings would leave with their loved ones, others with tears and empty arms.

There was no way for her to imagine what she’d feel when she left this place today. She knew Kylo wouldn’t come home with her no matter what decision the judge made. He had already been declared guilty in the eyes of the law- all today would tell her was whether she could ever hope to see him out here with her. Not today, but some day. Any day. Ever.

Her dad put the car in park and then waited in supportive silence as she tried to slow her breathing and bring her racing heart under control. He’d insisted on driving, on picking her up at her newly leased apartment so that she wouldn’t have to face the car ride away from the courthouse alone. She was grateful, honestly unsure if she’d be able to drive herself home if the judge resentenced Kylo to life and left her without hope.

She flicked open the mirror in the visor, checked the minimal makeup that she’d tried to apply, and sighed. She’d dressed carefully that morning- hair in a sophisticated twist, black skirt carefully pressed, heels low and sensible- but after several nights without sleep there was no makeup that could cover the dark circles exhaustion had drawn under her eyes.

Fear twisted in her stomach, a low roll of nausea that she had to swallow several times to keep from giving in to, but she smiled at her father reassuringly as she reached the door handle.

“It’s probably Rose or Bazine checking to see if we made it,” Rey mumbled as her phone started to vibrate in her bag, pulling out her phone and answering Rose’s call.

“We’re here,” Rey said, not bothering with her usual greeting and stepping out of the car before straightening her skirt around her legs before closing the door.

“So are we,” Rose told her. “Did you drive by the front of the courthouse on your way in?” Her voice was hushed, likely inside the courthouse already, but tense and worried.

Rey frowned, brow creasing in concern. “No, why?”

“There’s reporters everywhere,” Rose told her. “They swarmed us when we came in. They knew our names and everything, screaming questions about you and your relationship with Kylo. I don’t know what’s going on, but we had to make a run for it to get inside. Luckily, security isn’t letting them in the building.”

Rey stopped and looked around, the stiff fabric of her suit already wilting in the summer heat as it glinted viciously off the glass of parked cars and looming office windows. The parking lot was around the corner of the large courthouse building, out of sight of the main doors. She assumed they were waiting there since there was no other way for visitors to enter the premises so they could be certain to catch her on her way in.

She would have to run through them to get inside, it simply couldn’t be avoided.

“Thanks Rose,” she said. “We’ll be inside in just a minute.” She hung up and dropped the phone back into her bag, wiping her sweaty palms on her skirt as she explained the situation to her dad.

He stood for a second, blinking at her in the heat, and then shrugged out of his suit jacket. “Take this,” he told her, holding it out at arm’s length. “Toss it over your head when we run by so they can’t get a picture of your face.”

Rey reached for it, her hands trembling. “What about you?”

He lifted one shoulder dismissively. “There’s nothing they can do to an old man like me. Everyone at the church knows we’re here so it isn’t the same as you having to go to school and deal with unfortunate publicity.”

She rushed into his hug, quick and light to keep from wrinkling his crisp white dress shirt, and tugged his jacket loosely over her shoulders.

The screaming began the moment they turned the corner, an eagle eyed reporter catching a quick glimpse of her face before she pulled the jacket over her head and ducked down to focus on her own feet as her father guided her through the crowd.

Bodies pressed in on her from all sides, shoving as they tried to get closer than the rest, and a barrage of unfamiliar voices assaulted her senses.

“Rey, can you tell us how you became romantically involved with a killer?”

“Do you know that Kylo Ren murdered his own father? Did he lie to you to get you here today?”

“Pastor Johnson! How do you feel about your daughter being in a relationship with a brutal murderer?”

They pushed through, neither of them speaking until the glass doors of the courthouse closed behind them, muffling the sounds of disappointed reporters as they gradually stopped shouting questions and settled in to wait until their prey had to leave the building. The run back to her car would be even worse, but she had bigger issues on her mind now.

After the brief wait to pass through the building’s security, during which the security guard that scanned her bag and asked her to step forward through the metal detector gave her a pitying look, they passed into the large lobby and found Rose and Finn waiting for them with anxious expressions.

Rose hurried over, pulling Rey into a tight hug. “Are you okay? Kylo’s lawyer is already here, she went upstairs to settle some of his witnesses in and asked us to wait here for you once she saw us get mobbed and figured out that we must know you. She isn’t surprised that the media found out about the resentencing, but we don’t know how they found out about you and Kylo.”

“Are the reporters not going after everyone?”

Finn shook his head. “They went after Amilyn, but she’s his lawyer. The only ones besides her so far have been us and the two of you. All the witnesses made it in without anyone paying any attention so they must not know what they’re here for.”

Rey shrugged, it was a mystery that would have to wait, despite the nagging suspicion that planted itself firmly in the back of her mind. She pulled her phone out of her bag, checked that it was on silent and glanced quickly at the time. “Is Kaydel here yet? We should be heading upstairs.”

“Not yet but I can send her a message and have her meet us outside the courtroom. Amilyn said it would be just upstairs on the left.”

They found her in the hallway with Bazine and several other people that Rey had never met before, each of them pale and shaking but determined to see through the promise they had made to testify. Bazine’s hand on Rey’s was cold and clammy but she smiled tremulously at Rey's friends and family. Kaydel and Alison arrived just as Amilyn began to coach all of them through what they were likely to experience and how to behave in the courtroom.

“No gum, no phones, so disruptions,” she said firmly. “No matter how much of an ass the state lawyers may be. I know we’ve gone over this already with those of you who will be testifying, but it applies as much when you’re just watching the proceedings. I don’t want anyone thrown out or held in contempt. Any questions?”

She looked around at the small group, all that could be gathered to show support for the man she had come to represent, and nodded. She was as well dressed and composed as always, but Rey noticed the nervous tap of her perfectly manicured nails against her thigh as they waited for the doors of the courtroom to be opened so they could make their way inside.

Rey waited until they were allowed to go in, until everyone else was busy settling into their seats and looking anxiously around the quiet courtroom before she stepped close to Amilyn’s side and whispered quietly, so no one else could hear her, “Do you think he really has a chance? Any hope at all?”

She hadn’t asked before today because she had been afraid to hear the answer but now, with the decision so close, she couldn’t help herself.

Amilyn sighed and shook her head slightly as though unsure for once, her eyes drifting to the empty seat at the front of the courtroom where the judge would sit. “Judge Tano is a tough woman, but fair. If we were ever going to have a chance, this judge and these witnesses are the best we could have hoped for.”

Rey breathed, her lungs expelling all the breath she had been holding and some of the painful tension. Amilyn patted her hand and moved to the front of the room, beyond the small gate that barred the audience from approaching too close to the proceedings and began to set up her papers on the table where she and Kylo sat.

Rey sat on the bench closest to the front, hoping that Kylo would be able to sense her presence so close to him even though they weren’t allowed to speak to him. Her father sat on her right and Bazine on her left, her hand once again clutching Rey’s painfully as she looked around with panic in her eyes. Rose was on Bazine’s other side, talking to her about her son and trying to put her mind at ease.

She had just won a hesitant smile for her efforts when the door at the side of the room opened, and Kylo was led in. Bazine made a small noise, of shock or surprise Rey assumed, since she hadn’t seen him in many years and the boy that she had known back then was very different from the man now in front of her.

Rey took in his appearance quickly as he was led to his seat. He was wearing a white prison jumpsuit this time, hands handcuffed in front of him and connected to his shackled ankles with a long chain that also wrapped completely around his waist. Amilyn had prepared for that, and for the painful fact that he would remain in shackles as long as he was inside the courtroom. He looked tired and worried, a crease in his brow that faded away the moment he spotted her.

She smiled at him reassuringly and mouthed a silent, “I love you,” even though her heart was pounding and her fingers had gone numb with fear. It took all of her concentration to keep her breaths slow and shallow until he was seated next to Amilyn to wait for the judge’s arrival.

“This is really happening, isn’t it?” she asked quietly and of no one in particular. “Today is going to decide everything.”

“Hey,” Bazine crooned, rubbing her hand over Rey’s arm until she turned to face her. “It’s going to be okay. You’ve done so much to help him.”

“Let’s just pray it’s enough,” Rey said, desperately hoping and somewhat amused at how quickly Bazine’s need for comfort had turned into the need to give it. The things that Luke had done hadn’t driven the spirit out of her.

Rey looked down the hard courtroom bench, at the others that had come to testify, all of them uncomfortable in their stiff courtroom appropriate outfits as they stared around anxiously at the cheap wood paneled walls that lined the room. Some of them had been hurt by Luke, though not all of them, a fact that she sometimes lost sight of that since he was the devil that made the most sense to her with her upbringing. Snoke had done his own damage to the others, just as deep and horrifying, in ways that went far beyond her imagination. And despite all of that, these people had made it through and had chosen, at least for this moment, to fight for a better world and let this small piece of their truths be heard.

Another door opened, this one along the wall in front of them, and a woman in black robes entered the room as everyone scrambled to their feet. Judge Tano was straight-backed and stern faced as she walked to her seat, and Rey felt a frisson of fear work its way down her spine. All of her hope rested in this one woman and there was little to give any indication that she had any intention of handing out mercy or understanding as she swept the room with a cold gaze and began the proceedings.

The sharp snap of the gavel cut through the silence like a gunshot and Rey squeezed Bazine’s hand as they both jumped at the noise. Rey wasn’t usually the kind to be jumpy, but every muscle in her body was pulled tight and tense under the skin. Maybe it would be enough to keep the tears in.

They all listened with stoic faces as the state’s lawyer- a tall man that the judge referred to as Mr. Pryde who had stiff mannerisms and a penchant for clasping his hands behind his back as he spoke- laid out the case and the evidence.

“The facts,” he said, “are clear. There is no doubt about the guilt of this man. Kylo Ren, then a young man named Ben Solo, stabbed his father to death in an alley. The cold-bloodedness of such a crime, the obvious disregard for right and wrong, leaves the state no choice but to keep him in prison where he cannot be a danger to anyone else. And make no mistake, he is absolutely one of the dangerous ones.”

Kylo himself had believed that once, and Rey watched with a broken heart as he shrunk down under the weight of the words, his giant shoulders twisting in and down toward the table as though trying to hold himself together or disappear entirely.

Her free hand, the one not holding tightly to Bazine’s, balled into fist that she hid in the folds of her skirt. She knew very well what Amilyn had said, and that it was Mr. Pryde was simply doing his job, one that as a future lawyer she had to respect since every court proceeding relied on the ability of the judge or jury to hear both sides…but that did nothing to quell her desire to scream and rage and use her fists to silence him as he spoke. He didn’t know Kylo like she did, and he was wrong about the kind of person he was.

A gentle hand came to rest over hers with a soft pat that let her breathe and relax her fist. She could always count on her dad to know when she needed him most and she traded her rage for a litany of prayers to repeat inside her mind.

Rey turned her face away when they put up the photos of the crime scene, but the images danced colorfully behind her eyelids. The body lying in dirt and surrounded by trash, the pool of blood dried to black on the ground, and Han’s hand curled where it had fallen with the glint of a gold wedding ring still on his finger. It painted a damning picture and Rey swallowed back her tears as the information from the autopsy was read. Seventeen stab wounds. Damage to the heart, the stomach, the liver, the intestines…

“This was a personal attack,” Pryde said. “One born of rage and hatred. It was overkill, far beyond what was necessary for self-defense even if there had been a need for any. Mr. Solo was a good man, a loving father, and his life was cut short by his own child- an out of control teen, with no regard for life. A callous and selfish young man who was throwing a temper tantrum because his parents said it was time for him to stop running the streets causing trouble and come home.”

He turned then to look from the photos to Kylo, who was sitting perfectly still and listening intently to some comment that Amilyn was making to him in hushed tones. His body was still tense and even from several feet away Rey could see the effort he was using to keep an impassive face, the muscle in his cheek that was twitching from the strain.

“He deserves to be in prison for the rest of his life,” Pryde said, turning back to address Judge Tano directly, “and the state of Texas asks that you continue to protect the public by keeping him there. Give him the life sentence that he has earned with his despicable actions.”

Rey’s shoulders slumped as he finally sat down, having finished giving the state’s argument for sentencing. It was overwhelming, but even in all of that she knew that he was missing one crucial thing that Amilyn had explained would have been invaluable to his plea.

Normally this would be the time when the victim’s family could address the court and give their impact statements, tell the judge how deeply the loss of their loved one had affected their lives and ask the judge to maintain the harsh sentence that had been imposed.

But Han Solo had not had a family before he had gotten married and Leia, despite the doubts and the anger that she felt toward her son, was not here. 


	19. I'm Here

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Give justice to the weak and the fatherless; maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute.  
> Rescue the weak and the needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked- Psalm 82:3-4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want to say a quick thank you once again to everyone for reading this and for your amazing comments and support! Thanks to my amazing beta aurorareylo for helping me have the courage to post these very difficult chapters. 
> 
> This chapter and the ones immediately following it were designed to express my feelings about certain things that were seen in canon- mainly the way that the Jedi were treated as heroes even though we have seen many times that their actions and their strict adherence to dogma and religious rules are harmful when they are placed above the wellbeing of individuals in their care. This an exploration of what that kind of thinking does in the real world and how it harms people. The fact that the actions of the Jedi are partially responsible for the fall of Ben Solo (and thus his involvement with Snoke and the death of Han) is a big theme of the story. As is the fact that Snoke's relationship with Ben was predatory, harmful, and mentally manipulative/abusive. He took advantage of the vulnerability that the Jedi created in Ben. 
> 
> TW//CW for this chapter- mentions of the following: homophobia, transphobia, physical abuse of teenagers (sometimes based on sexuality or gender expression), food deprivation, conversion therapy, religious based abuse, forced sexual contact between teens, teens having a consensual sexual relationship, forced abortion in a pregnant teenage girl, attempted suicide by a teen, a teen running away 
> 
> Also some of the characters are depicted in a way that is out of character and not in line with canon depictions! I know that is upsetting for some people so I want to make sure that is acknowledged in advance. I am carrying through the themes of the canon material, not the literal canon events, so I needed to bend characterization in some places to achieve that.
> 
> *If I missed anything please let me know. Almost all of these are things that have been tagged on the story as a whole since the beginning but I want to make sure that everyone reading knows what they are getting into for this part specifically.

Mitaka was the first person to be called to the stand to share his story. 

Amilyn was kind as he walked to the front, guiding him to the small box where he was supposed to sit and smiling at him encouragingly as he placed his hand on a thick black Bible and swore to tell them all nothing but the truth.

He was unnaturally pale and even from a distance Rey could see the line of sweat that beaded on his brow. None of this would be easy for him and she prayed that he would feel some comfort, some sense of relief once it was done. Luke was dead and this was the closest that Mitaka would ever get to justice for what he had endured.

Amilyn approached the stand and the questioning began.

“Good morning, Mr. Mitaka,” she said pleasantly. “Thank you for agreeing to come here today. Let’s begin by having you tell us when you first met Kylo Ren.”

Mitaka glanced at Kylo and then back at Amilyn. “I was sixteen,” he said quickly. “So, it would have been more than a decade ago.”

“You were sixteen,” Amilyn said with an encouraging nod. “And how old was Kylo at that time?”

“He was fifteen when I first met him, but he went by Ben Solo back then. Before he changed his name.”

“Yes, he did,” Amilyn said. “And how did you two meet?”

Mitaka swallowed and got even paler, a feat Rey wouldn’t have believed possible until she saw it for herself. “I, uh, lived with his uncle, Luke Skywalker, when Ben was sent to live there, too.”

Amilyn began to pace slowly across the floor in front of the judge, nodding along with his answers and looking back at him when it was time to ask another question. 

“This was at Luke Skywalker’s house?” she asked.

“No, ma’am. He ran a…” Mitaka hesitated, his brow furrowing as he searched for the right word before giving up, “well, I don’t know what it was exactly, but he called it a school. We- all the kids, I mean- lived at the school.”

“This was a private school?” Amilyn asked, then continuing to the next question without waiting for an answer. “Luke Skywalker was a pretty famous evangelical preacher, so I assume it was a religious school?”

“It wasn’t a school,” Mitaka said bluntly. “He called it one, but it wasn’t. We didn’t go there to learn academics- we went because our parents wanted him to fix us.”

“Fix you?” Amilyn shook her head, giving a small puzzled shrug that Rey knew was theatrical. “What was wrong with you Mr. Mitaka?”

Mitaka took a deep breath, the kind that shuddered a person’s whole body and left them hollow on the inside. “I’m gay,” he said simply. “My parents didn’t believe in that sort of thing.”

“They didn’t believe you were gay?”

“They didn’t want me to be,” he clarified. “They wanted Luke to fix it and make me straight. He preached fire and brimstone at them and anyone else who would listen, damnation in every breath. They were terrified that I was going to hell and they would have done just about anything to stop it.”

“I see,” Amilyn said quietly. “Were all the kids at this ‘school’ gay?”

Mitaka shook his head. “No, some of them were trans or bi, doing drugs or sneaking out. Luke took in pretty much any kid whose parents thought they were a problem, as long as they bought into his version of God and had the funds to pay for his version of discipline.”

Amilyn smiled tightly. “And were you there the entire time that Kylo was?”

Mitaka nodded, shifting restlessly in his seat. Rey knew that Amilyn had practiced the questions with him before today and she suspected that he knew the more difficult questions were coming. “I was there for two years and Ben…Kylo…was my roommate for just over a year. He ran away a few months before my parents finally came and picked me up.”

“So, you were there with him and saw the conditions that he was living in while he was with Luke?”

“Yes, ma’am. We pretty much all lived the same way while we there.”

Rey flicked a glance at Kylo, at the tense line of his shoulders as he stared straight ahead at Mitaka. His face, the eyes that were usually so expressive, were like stone as he listened.

“Can you describe what it was like? Living with Luke?” Amilyn continued.

Mitaka’s mouth moved, a single word breathed so quietly that the judge had to ask him to repeat himself.

“Yes,” he said again, more firmly this time. “It was hell.”

“It was hell in what way, Mr. Mitaka? Can you be more specific?”

“It was hell in every way,” he said, glancing at Bazine and then away again quickly. “Different for each of us but hell, just the same.”

“Mr. Mitaka…” Amilyn began, but he cut her off before she could finish.

“I slept on a concrete floor for two years,” he said bitterly. “Most of the time we didn’t have blankets and we never had air conditioning. My showers consisted of being sprayed down with a hose whenever Luke or one of his disciples decided we smelled bad enough to warrant it.”

The words settled over them all, stealing some of the air from the room. Rey breathed, slowly and intentionally, as Bazine gripped hard onto her hand. Her father tapped his fingers on the bench beside his thighs and when she looked up at him his mouth was set in a grim line. 

Mitaka continued speaking.

“If we were lucky, we got one meal a day, and that was only if they decided we had been good. If we hadn’t been, they just skipped our meal altogether, locked us in our rooms for days at a time so we had to piss in the corner.”

Amilyn paused, giving him a moment to collect himself as the courtroom sat in silence. They all watched as he paused, his lip trembling as he composed his thoughts. 

“And was Kylo also treated this way?” she said once he seemed to have gathered control of his emotions.

“He was,” Mitaka said. “But he didn’t get scared like the rest of us- he got angrier. Luke preached to him all the time about his sin and how he was tainted, just really awful stuff, you know? But he’d go without his food or his blankets just to spite them instead of doing what Luke told him to do, so they got rough with him more than the rest of us.”

“What did Luke tell him to do?”

Mitaka shrugged helplessly. “Not to sneak food to people that were being punished was the first thing. He brought me a piece of bread back from dinner that first week he was there, and Luke split his lip wide open.”

“What else?”

Another pause, longer this time. “He was big, even back then he was big for a kid, so Luke wanted him to help with the rest of us and he wouldn’t do it. They tried to get him…get him to hold people down sometimes but…”

“Hold people down for what, Mr. Mitaka?”

“Well, like I said some of the kids that were there were trans and the girls…they would come in with long hair and Luke would cut it, take their dresses and cut them all up, too, so they’d look like boys again.”

“He wouldn’t help Luke do that?”

Mitaka shook his head, looking at Kylo before turning back to Amilyn and saying clearly, “No, he wouldn’t do that. He would see them coming out crying, their heads shaved so their hair was all short and he was so mad. We were all mad, we all hated Luke but Ben…Ben was stubborn. The more Luke tried to break him the angrier he got.”

“Did Luke ask for his help with anything else?”

“Yeah, he…” a small sob broke from Mitaka, his breath catching as everyone looked away to give him a moment. “Luke, he was a firm believer in conversion therapy. Not the kind done by doctors that pretend to know what they’re doing, but the kind where some preacher thinks he can torture the gay out of you. Kylo wouldn’t help with that.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Mitaka, but can you explain to us in more detail exactly what happened and what Kylo saw when he was there with you?”

“Yeah, sorry.” He pressed his palms to his eyes, trying to stop the steady leak of tears. Beside Rey, Bazine was stiff and tense, her nails digging painfully into Rey’s hand. “Um, Luke was…He was convinced that having sex with a woman would fix me. He would make me…with some of the girls at the school and if I wouldn’t then he would have them beat me.”

“And Kylo wouldn’t hit you?”

“No, he wouldn’t, not even when they hit him instead. And he wouldn’t,  _ fuck _ , he wouldn’t help Luke with the girls either.” Mitaka looked at Amilyn helplessly, hoping desperately that she would understand his meaning and not make him say it out loud. “Luke tried to make him, told him that if they learned to like sex with men that it would save their souls, but Ben was pissed, and he wouldn’t do it. He came back to the room one night beat worse than any of us that I ever saw, but he wouldn’t hurt any of us.”

“And Luke was the one who hit you?”

“Sometimes it was him, but most of the time he just liked to stand off to the side quoting  _ scripture,” _ Mitaka sneered the word, like it was contemptible in its very existence, “while his buddies did the beating. He had a guy, Chewie, and he did most of it. That guy was huge, not even Ben stood a chance against him.”

“Thank you, Mr. Mitaka, you can step down now,” Amilyn said and he visibly relaxed as he walked back to his seat, his eyes never looking up from the floor. Kylo watched him go and Rey noticed the clenched set of his jaw, the haunted regret in his eyes. 

He looked at her briefly and she mouthed "It's okay, I'm here," earning a small grateful smile from him before he turned away, glancing nervously at the guards because he wasn't supposed to interact with them while they were in the courtroom.

Amilyn called Bazine next and she stood on legs that wobbled, holding to Rey’s hand until she could stand on her own and make her way to the front. Her steps were slow and measured, a clear reluctance in her stride that was made even more obvious by the pinched look on her face when she turned to face them all.

Amilyn waited for her to be sworn in as Rey wrenched her gaze away from the small, terrified woman to the large, hunched form of Kylo. He was staring straight ahead, his hand holding the arm of his chair so tightly that she was surprised it hadn’t cracked under the strain.

He hadn’t seen Bazine in thirteen years and Rey swallowed her tears and her sudden insecurity as he stared with something close to longing at another woman’s face.

“Good morning, Mrs. Nettle,” Amilyn began, and Bazine turned away from looking at Kylo to look at her instead.

“Good morning,” Bazine repeated, her hands twisting and untwisting in her lap.

“You also lived with Kylo at Luke’s school?”

Bazine’s mouth turned down in a scowl. “I would agree that it wasn’t a school, but I did live there with Ben and Mitaka.”

“Were you there the whole time that Kylo was there?”

“Nearly the whole time” Bazine clarified. “I think I got there a few weeks after him.”

Amilyn nodded again, continuing her pacing. “And what can you tell me about the living conditions while you were there?”

“The same as Mitaka,” Bazine said, her face scrunching as she tried to hold back tears that slipped down her cheeks anyway.. Rey wasn’t certain if they were born from sadness or anger- Bazine’s tone had plenty of both. “Luke Skywalker was a  _ bastard _ who cared more about the rules in some fucking book than he ever did about any of us.”

Amilyn’s demeanor remained carefully neutral in the face of the other woman’s outburst. She waited patiently for Bazine’s body language to relax before she proceeded with her questioning. “Can you tell us about your experiences at Luke’s? About what brought you there?”

“My parents brought me there,” she said with a bitter laugh, swiping at her cheeks in annoyance. “They caught me sneaking out at night, meeting my boyfriend and getting high, and they didn’t like it. Luke told them he could settle me down so they dropped me off and didn’t even look back.”

“And did he? Settle you down?”

“He beat me and let me go without food until I was too damn tired and broken and hungry to do anything but cry some days, so he certainly tried.”

Amilyn nodded, tapping her finger against her chin. “Mrs. Nettle, how would you describe your relationship with Kylo during this time?”

Bazine hesitated, biting her lip. “He was protective of all of us and I gravitated to him when I arrived. I guess I would say he was my boyfriend, or the closest that any of us could come to that kind of relationship in a place like that.”

“And was your relationship with him sexual?” Bazine winced at the question and Amilyn hurried to add, “ I’m sorry, I have to ask.”

Bazine looked down at her hands. “Yes, it was. He would sneak out of his room whenever he could to come and find me. I loved him,” she said, shrugging slightly and glancing up at him before quickly looking down at her hands. 

Rey looked at Kylo, at the single tear that was sliding down his cheek, and then away. She knew the story already, but seeing them relive it together was different and she felt like an intruder, an interloper in their private grief.

“Can you tell us why you left Luke’s school, Mrs. Nettle?”

“I tried to kill myself so my parents finally believed me when I said I would rather die than stay there.”

“Why would you do that, Mrs. Nettle? Did something happen at Luke’s to drive to such an extreme method of escape?”

“I was pregnant,” Bazine said quietly, looking down so that they could barely hear her and fat tears dropped from her face to her lap as she spoke. “Luke forced me to get an abortion. I don’t know where he found the doctors, but I never even left the school. They came to me- a very tall man and a very short one, bickering the whole time. I don’t think either of them ever even looked at me. They were so cold, like a couple of robots.”

Amilyn stopped pacing, addressing Bazine directly but with great tenderness. “Was the child Kylo’s?”

“I believe so,” Bazine said, nodding her head as she glanced up at Amilyn. “He had just found out and he was…he was so excited to be a father, even though we were too young and living in that awful place.”

Amilyn shook her head, resting her hand on the banister beside Bazine as she spoke. “I thought Luke was a very religious man, why would he do that to the two of you? Something that would have been so against his faith?”

“He didn’t think Kylo was the father,” Bazine explained.

“No?”

“He thought Mitaka might have been the father,” Bazine continued. “He made us…well, you know? To make Mitaka like having sex with girls.”

“So, he forced you to have sex with Mr. Mitaka to cure him of homosexuality and you believe Luke was afraid that the baby would be proof of that abuse?”

Rey looked at Kylo in surprise. He hadn’t told her that he might not have been the father of Bazine’s baby and she realized now how much distance Mitaka and Bazine had put between themselves, the way that they hadn’t spoken that morning even though they had known each other so long ago. 

“Yes,” Bazine confirmed, “I believe Luke was afraid that DNA could prove the child was Mitaka’s and that it could support our stories if we ever came forward with allegations of abuse. Although, I suppose that even if the child had been Kylo’s, it would have looked bad for the school. If any of the other parents found out that I got pregnant while I was staying with him, it would have damaged his reputation.”

“What did Kylo do when he found out what Luke had done?”

“He was angry, worse than I had ever seen. I was angry, too, and hurt that Kylo had let it happen. I know it wasn’t his fault but back then…We argued and I was so mad that he hadn’t protected me that I told him that I would never forgive him.”

“And then what happened?”

“He confronted Luke and I think…I think he attacked him. There was a lot of shouting, things breaking…and then Ben was gone. He never came back and the next time any of us even knew where he was, it was when he saw him on the news…after, well, you know.”

Amilyn nodded. “After his father’s death.”

“Yes, after that.” Bazine turned to face Judge Tano, her eyes clear and earnest. “I tried to kill myself to get away from that place and if my parents had tried to send me back there…I would be the one sitting in a prison cell today. I would have done  _ anything _ to not have to go back.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Disclaimer- the type and extent of abuse that occurs during conversion therapy varies extensively. During the later part of the 20th century it was practiced by those in medical or mental health fields and taken somewhat seriously as a potential option for people who were unsatisfied with their sexuality due the homophobia that was prevalent at the time. This often involved exposure to stimulating erotic images combined with an electric shock or vomit inducing drug to try and reprogram the brain's response system. This practice was not successful and has been condemned as harmful by most professionals and all major organizations in the medical and mental health communities.
> 
> There have been allegations that other types of conversion techniques have been practiced in certain religious communities/cults. Stories from these victims often include inhumane living conditions, beatings, rape, and many other extreme practices, including exorcisms. 
> 
> The Ben story of living with Luke and the abuses that Mitaka and the others suffered are a compilation of a variety of different such stories that I have heard over the years blended with elements and themes of Star Wars canon. It is not meant to depict any one person or experience and it is not intended to be an exact recreation of real life.
> 
> Here's a link to an overview article on the practice- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversion_therapy
> 
> and a link with some information on how you can help get this practice outlawed in all 50 states- https://www.nclrights.org/our-work/born-perfect/


	20. Silence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No one who hopes in you will ever be put to shame- Psalm 25:3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay on this chapter. I wasn't able to put any time into writing during the week of my final exams, so it took a little longer to get the chapter finished. As always, please know that I appreciate each of you for reading along as I write this and for every single comment and kudo that you give me. It really does keep me going when writing this gets hard. 
> 
> TW//CW for this chapter- Mentions of the following: gang activity, teen runaways, teens committing acts of violence, teens drinking, teens smoking, teens using drugs, teens being manipulated and used, teen prostitution (strong dubcon and noncon elements), violence and unspecified acts of torture being committed against teens, teens disappearing due to implied violence and foul play. 
> 
> This is the chapter where we hear about Kylo's time with Snoke, so it's once again very dark stuff. If you feel that I missed anything specific that you think should have been mentioned here, please let me know.
> 
> Once again thanks you to my amazing Beta AuroraReylo for giving me the courage to post this!

The next three witnesses, the ones that had lived with Kylo after he had run from Luke and found his way to Snoke, went by as barely more than blur in Rey’s mind. She already knew that they had all formed up to make a small gang and that the things they had done were harmful and illegal, but Kylo had been brief on the details.

He had described his time spent with Luke with anger, but his time with Snoke had been cloaked in shame. She hadn’t pressed him, knowing the overall picture had been enough, but the details of it all took her breath away when it spilled from the mouth of the witnesses in a rush that jumbled together in her mind.

Her father and Bazine clutched her hands, grounding her as the full ugly truth left them all reeling.

Vicrul was the first on the stand, his face impassive and set, as though he wore a mask of indifference that no one and nothing could penetrate.

Amilyn approached him with an easy smile, walked him through the pleasantries, and then began. “Do you remember when Kylo first came to Snoke?”

“Yeah, Snoke found him living on the streets, just like the rest of us.”

“The rest of you? Who was that, exactly?”

“Snoke called us the Knights of Ren. His little street gang. We thought we were a bunch of tough guys.”

“I see,” Amilyn said, tapping her finger on her chin as she appeared to contemplate his response. “And did Kylo join the Knights of Ren when he came?”

“Sure, we’re the ones that gave him the new name. Kylo. He was a big guy, scary looking. Exactly what Snoke was looking for, so he moved him in with us.”

“You shared a house?”

He shrugged, but the movement was restless. “Better than living under a bridge, lady.”

“I’m sure it was," Amilyn agreed, amused. "What was that like? Living with Snoke?”

“It was good at first. We had the run of the house, came and went when we pleased. Did whatever we wanted.”

“And Kylo had that freedom, too?”

“We all did. All the Knights. We didn’t answer to anyone except Snoke.”

“And what happened when Kylo moved in? How did he react to that?”

Vicrul smiled, hard and bitter. “Same as any kid with a chip on his shoulder, He did whatever the hell he wanted to- smoked, drank, fucked, whatever drugs we could get our hands on. And a whole lot of it, too.”

Rey listened tensely, her eyes glued to Kylo’s broad shoulders as Vicrul finished his testimony. His words were echoed nearly exactly by Ushar, who took the stand as soon as he was finished. 

Ushar was smaller than Vicrul, less sure of himself on the stand, but his face was just as stoic.

“What happened once Kylo got settled into the house,” Amilyn asked him, waiting patiently as he shifted in his seat. Vicrul had been hesitant here, too, but Amilyn’s practice once again paid off, as both were able to answer.

“He got used to the drugs and the freedom and then Snoke yanked the chain. Nothing comes without a price, you know? We ran the streets and did his dirty work, robbery, extortion, real violent shit, but that part wasn’t so bad…at least, not for us, I mean.”

“Then what was bad for you?”

He laughed, humorless. “It started out with rich women. Snoke was smart and he eased you in that way because how can you say no to getting money for having sex with a beautiful woman? Sure, he’d sold you, but it was easy to justify it.”

“He sold you? You mean that he sold your services sexually?”

“Yeah, but like I said, it wasn’t so bad at first but…then it got worse. Once you were sort of used to it, then he wasn’t so picky about the kind of people he sold you to or what they wanted. Nothing you could do by then, of course, so you just take more of the drugs he’s handing out and pretend it wasn’t happening.”

“I see,” Amilyn said sympathetically. “And were these people ever violent toward any of you?”

He tapped his face, the sliver of a thin white scar bisecting his chin. “The first time Snoke sold me to some guy that wanted me to suck him off. I learned real quick not to say no to something they paid for. If they didn’t hurt me, Snoke sure as hell would.”

Cardo was after Ushar and he was steely eyed on the stand, body nearly unnaturally still as he watched Amilyn pace the floor in front of him.

“And how did Kylo react, when Snoke started requiring him to do these things?”

“Kylo was different from the rest of us, angrier and more likely to start a fight, even with Snoke. He didn’t like it, didn’t want to do the other things that Snoke was asking. He went along with it for a little while, because he was convinced that Snoke must know what he was doing, but eventually he decided that he’d had enough.”

“And then what did he do?”

Cardo shuddered hard enough that it was visible even to Rey before he answered. “He tried to leave.”

Rey’s eyes flew back to Kylo, sitting hunched and shrunken in his chair. He hadn’t told her that he’d tried to get away.

“Snoke wasn’t having that, of course,” Cardo continued, “and when Kylo tried to leave…” He shook his head and looked down at his feet.

“What happened?” Amilyn prompted when he had been silently staring at his shoes for several moments.

“They drug him down into the basement,” Cardo explained. “Snoke and some of his buddies. There was no one else in the house except for me and even the drugs I took weren’t enough to drown out the screams. I still have nightmares about it sometimes.”

“Did Kylo ever tell you exactly what happened in the basement?”

“No, but he never tried to leave again, and he did what Snoke wanted after that. He didn’t give Snoke any more problems and Kylo became the new leader of the Knights of Ren not long after that.”

“What happened to the leader before Kylo?”

“A lot of things went missing around Snoke,” Cardo said simply. “You didn’t ask about it unless you wanted to be the next thing that went missing.”

Cardo stepped down and returned to his seat. The eyewitness testimonies were over, leaving the courtroom drained and flat. Behind the table across from Kylo and Amilyn, the state’s lawyer fidgeted, shuffling and straightening papers that didn’t need to be straightened.

The state’s stance that Kylo had been nothing more than a typical spoiled teen, too rich and pampered to accept it when his parents placed reasonable limits on him, had been called into serious question.

Judge Tano was tapping a finger on the wooden stand in front of her as she looked at her watch.

“We’ll take a thirty-minute recess before the next witness is called,” she announced, tapping the gavel so that the sound of it echoed through the room. “Everyone please be back here by then.”

Rey watched in silence as the guards led Kylo from the room, her jaw clenched anxiously when he didn’t look at her at all.

“Where are they taking him?” she asked Amilyn, leaning forward to grip the rails that separated the lawyers and prisoners from the audience.

“He gets a bathroom break, too,” Amilyn explained patiently, gesturing toward the front to remind her that the judge had also left. “I suggest all of you do the same. We still have a long day ahead of us.”

She walked out then, leading the way as the rest of them shuffled out awkwardly behind her. They had been cordial to one another earlier in the day, all of them polite if a bit distant, but the time during the hearing had drawn them together with a forced intimacy that made them quiet and reluctant to meet each other’s eyes.

The witnesses had had all their wounds and secrets laid bare and Rey, with her family and friends beside her and a life where her wounds had been laid over with nearly a lifetime of loving support, felt like she had been an observer to something sordid and painful, intruded in a place that they wouldn’t want others to see.

The hallway was full of people, moving about their business and speaking in hushed tones, but Rey was distant and numb, exhausted by the emotions that had buffeted her since Mitaka had first taken the stand.

Bazine had let go of her hand, but they all walked together to the bathroom around the corner and Rey watched her in the mirror as they stood at the sink side-by-side. Bazine, too, looked fragile and drained, her eyes weary and fingers shaking slightly as she dried them on cheap brown paper towels that were too stiff and too thin to absorb the water. She tossed them in the trash, already full almost to overflowing, and wiped her hands on the sides of her expensive black slacks. Rose and the others had already left, the door swinging shut behind them and leaving the two women alone as Bazine cleared her throat. “Thank you for sitting with me today. It was difficult to relive those things and to hear about…well, everything that happened to him after.”

Rey bit her lip, her teeth digging in a little harder than they would normally have done. “You still care about him,” she said, “and I understand that, but I love him. I love who he is now, the man he grew into. So, it hurts a little that he still looks at you the way that he does. I just thought you should know that before you thank me.”

Bazine smiled, perfectly even white teeth that flashed briefly in the harsh fluorescent lighting that flickered overhead. “All the more reason for me to say it. You’ve put aside any personal feelings or discomfort about what happened between us years ago because you love him. You’ve been nothing but nice to me and he’s lucky to have you.”

Rey sighed, the guilt she felt for the flash of jealousy she’d felt in the courtroom easing just a bit. “Thanks,” she said stiffly, but Bazine laid a gentle hand on her arm.

“We went through a lot together and it’s been a little overwhelming seeing him again after all this time. It brings back a lot of memories, a lot of things we didn’t have time to process back then. If he’s feeling anything right now, it’s probably the same kind of weird nostalgia. I loved Ben, but I was a different person then. I love my husband and Ben loves you.”

“I’m sorry,” Rey said, shifting nervously from one foot the other and chewing on the raw spot she was rapidly wearing into her bottom lip. “I know that you’re trying to help us, and I shouldn’t have felt upset about it. I understand that you two have a history, something together that I can’t understand.”

“Just a small broken piece of his past,” Bazine said, stepping forward to give Rey a gentle armed squeeze, her arm wrapped around Rey’s waist as they walked out of the bathroom together. “You know him better now than I ever did.”

Rose was the only one waiting in the hallway when they came back out and she stood up from the bench she was sitting on when she saw them. “Is everything okay? It’s almost time to start so everyone else went back in.”

“It’s fine,” Rey assured her. “We just needed a minute to talk things over. It’s been a hard day.”

Rose nodded as they walked, wiping a tear away as she laughed nervously. “It’s been hard for me to even listen to, so I can’t imagine what it’s been like for the rest of you.”

“It has been hard, but it was a long time coming. Luke drove Ben straight into Snoke’s hands and if that hadn’t happened…Well, it’s just time there was some acknowledgement of what he did to us and how harmful it was.”

“I just hope all of this eventually leads to something good,” Rey said and the others nodded a silent agreement as they walked together back into the courtroom. Everyone else was already seated, waiting for the judge. Kylo was back in his chair beside Amilyn, his head in his hands as she leaned over close to his ear and spoke to him in a voice that was too quiet for Rey to hear even once she had taken her seat on the bench behind them.

She cleared her throat quietly when Amilyn finished speaking and turned to go over her notes, but he didn’t turn to look at her as she’d hoped, and she shifted restlessly. He was slouched in his chair, back hunched and shoulders slumped.

Why wouldn’t he look at her?

She had only a brief moment to wonder before the door at the front opened and Judge Tano resumed her seat, bringing court back into session with another rap of her gavel.

“Your next witness, please,” she said, indicating to Amilyn to begin before the echoes had faded from the room.

Amilyn stood, squeezing Kylo’s arm reassuringly and calling for Dr. Engell to take the stand.

The doctor, a psychologist that Rey had been told was an essential part of helping the judge to understand the importance of the witnesses’ testimony, appeared to be several years older than Amilyn. Though softer in the eyes and less rigid in her posture than Amilyn, she seemed equally at ease in the courtroom, with a relaxed demeanor that Rey knew must have come with years of testifying.

“Dr. Engell can you tell how long ago you evaluated Kylo for the first time?”

“Thirteen years ago.”

“And the results of that evaluation?”

“His mental state was as expected for the abuse that he’d suffered and the trauma he experienced from killing his father. His time with Luke and Snoke had given him a severe form of chronic Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. We tend to associate this with veterans or refugees- those who have seen combat- but this is a common occurrence after the brain experiences trauma of any kind and is often seen in those who have abused or sexually assaulted.”

“I understand,” Amilyn said. “And what effects does Post Traumatic Stress Disorder- that’s the correct name for what most of us know as PTSD, correct?- what effects does that have on the brain and a person’s behavior?”

“The brain changes in structure and function when experiencing trauma at that level,” Doctor Engell explained. “It becomes more sensitive and the neurotransmitters that are associated with stress are produced in greater amounts when the person experiences a stressor. The person may experience nightmares, sleep disturbances, intrusive memories, or anger and irritability. They may react unpredictably to any stimulus that triggers the mind to remember the events that caused the trauma.”

“So, you’re saying that people with PTSD are dangerous?”

“No, not at all,” the doctor responded calmly, and Rey knew that the question was asked to give her more of an opportunity to explain the specifics to the judge. “Most people that experience it are not a danger to themselves or others, but Kylo was put in a unique situation in which this condition may have made it far more difficult for him to react rationally.”

Amilyn nodded, apparently content with the doctor’s explanation. “Dr. Engell, let’s back up for one moment. I want to ask you about something else that you mentioned a few moments ago. You said that the first time you evaluated Kylo, he had recently experienced the trauma of murdering his father. Could you explain further what you meant by that statement?”

“Yes, killing his father was an extremely traumatic event for him. It was not done with any kind of malice, but rather was triggered by the situation that he found himself in and the already existing psychological problems that had been created by the abuse at the hands of both Luke Skywalker and Snoke.”

“Can you explain the type of reaction that someone that had lived through those experiences might have if they were in Kylo’s place?”

“To begin with, the prospect of going back to Luke’s would have been a very triggering event in itself. Kylo had recently escaped from a very abusive situation that he felt he had no control over and the idea of being returned to that environment would have been overwhelming, even without the psychological effects of his time with Snoke.”

“I see,” Amilyn said. “And how would you characterize his time with Snoke?”

“It is evident, in my opinion, that Kylo was a victim of human trafficking. Runaway teens are especially vulnerable to predation of this type, and Snoke used many of the tactics that traffickers use to control and manipulate their victims.”

“Tactics such as?”

“They often begin by offering these teens a safe space, somewhere to go where they have freedom and control- both things that would have been intensely important to Kylo after his escape from Luke.”

“This is intentional on the part of the predator?”

“Very much,” Doctor Engell agreed. “Once the teen feels safe, they offer them drugs and other illegal substances, both as a means of keeping them compliant and as a hook. It creates a physical dependency and is the first of many things that they can hold over the victim’s head.”

Amilyn faced the doctor, her expression one of practiced curiosity. “Why would they need to have leverage over the teen?”

“Each case of illegal activity or morally compromising behavior adds another layer of isolation and embarrassment that prevents the victim from feeling that they would be able to reintegrate into society,” Doctor Engell explained carefully. “First drugs, then, in cases such as Kylo’s, it may include committing other crimes or acts of violence, and finally they are forced involuntarily into sex work.”

“This gives the trafficker control over the teen?” Amilyn asked.

“It does,” the doctor agreed. “Isolating them with shame can prevent them from reaching out to others for help. Kylo firmly believed that he couldn’t reach out, that his parents would never accept him, and Snoke told Kylo that he would reveal those secrets if Kylo ever left.”

“But Kylo did attempt to leave,” Amilyn reminded her.

“Yes, he did. The tactics used are effective but not infallible. Kylo’s lucky that he was considered valuable by Snoke or it’s very likely that he would have simply been killed for attempting to leave. As it was, he was tortured by Snoke until Snoke believed that he was no longer a flight risk because he knew the consequences.”

“And when Kylo’s father came and tried to bring him home? What would that experience have been like for him?”

“He would have felt extremely threatened. In his mind he was trapped and he knew what Luke would do to him if he were returned to his uncle’s care and what Snoke would do if he tried to leave- going with his father was not an option in Kylo’s mind. Especially since he believed his parents would never accept him back if they had learned the truth. There was nothing that he wouldn’t have done in that moment to prevent those things from happening.”

Amilyn paused, letting the implications of the psychologist’s last statement settle over the room before speaking again. “Doctor, have you evaluated Kylo recently?”

“Yes, we’ve spoken several times over the past few months.”

“In your professional opinion, Doctor Engell, do you believe that Kylo is likely to reoffend? Do you believe that he’s dangerous?”

Dr. Engell looked at Kylo, taking time to consider the answer to the question, reassuring the judge that she wasn’t rushing her words or failing to properly consider the potential harm he could cause if she were wrong.

“No, I don’t believe that he’s a significant risk to society,” she said firmly. “The conditions surrounding his original offense were unique- an unfortunate combination of the worst possible circumstances, in which an abused young man with severe Post Traumatic Stress Disorder was put into a situation where he felt that he had no recourse other than to resort to violence.”

“Thank you, Doctor,” Amilyn said, smiling at her politely as the opposing attorney tapped his pen on the table irritably. “I have no further questions for you, and you may step down.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Human trafficking is a serious problem in the United States and around the world. There are several ways that people are targeted. Many are women and children that are brought to another country believing that they will be getting a better life when they arrive but become victims of sex trafficking or forced labor instead. They may have come without documentation or had their travel documents taken by those who are exploiting them, which creates a distrust for law enforcement and makes it difficult for them to seek help. 
> 
> Kylo experiences a different common kind of trafficking, where predators target runaway or vulnerable teens (often lured in from online contact) and gain their trust before manipulating them into increasingly more criminal activity. Trafficking the teen for sex work is usually the end goal of those manipulations. This is more common for young girls, but any teen can be trafficked. 
> 
> The Center for Missing and Exploited Children had information on how to help locate missing teens- https://www.missingkids.org/HOME 
> 
> Information for the US if you or someone you know is a victim of human trafficking-
> 
> 1 (888) 373-7888  
> National Human Trafficking Hotline  
> SMS: 233733 (Text "HELP" or "INFO")  
> Hours: 24 hours, 7 days a week  
> Languages: English, Spanish and 200 more languages  
> Website: humantraffickinghotline.org
> 
> Kylo's story is not meant to represent any one particular person or situation. It is a combination of many different things that I have learned about this problem over the years.


	21. I'm Sorry

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Repent, therefore, and turn back, that your sins may be blotted out- Acts 3:19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for your continued support for this story! Every time I post a chapter, I am blown away by the number of comments that I get and I can't begin to tell you how much it means to me.
> 
> TW // This chapter contains brief mentions teen sex trafficking and previously committed violence

Judge Tano leaned back in her chair, contemplating the room as everyone sat in uneasy silence following the testimony of Dr. Engell. She peered down at Amilyn, who waited silently as she stood beside the table where Kylo sat. Rey thought that he seemed even more tense now than he had before, his muscles quivering under the rough fabric of his jumpsuit.

Seeing him like this and not being able to go to him, or even whisper words of encouragement, was harder than anything Rey had experienced since this whole thing began.

“Will your client be addressing the court,” the judge asked Amilyn, and Kylo raised his head as Amilyn turned to look at him. She nodded, almost imperceptibly, and he returned the gesture.

Was she asking him if he would, or telling him that she thought he should? Either way, it seemed that a final decision hadn’t been made between them until that moment.

“He will be, your honor,” Amilyn said, stepping back for Kylo to make room for him to pass. His progress was slow and awkward, his movements artificially shortened by the chains around his ankles. They clinked together with each step, a cheerless jingle that reminded them all of the years of freedom he’d lost as a consequence for what had happened that night between him and his father.

She watched him carefully as he settled in at the stand, settling his bound hands in his lap after swearing unenthusiastically on the Bible they offered him that he would tell them all the truth.

He looked small and younger than he was as he waited for Amilyn to begin questioning him, like the ordeal of sitting through the hearing had reduced him once again to the boy he had been the first time he’d sat in a courtroom. 

The course of his life decided for him then by a system of justice that had failed to listen to his side of the story. They were listening to it now, but the years in between had cost him much of what he might have been and there was still no guarantee that he’d leave with different results.

He’d been too young the first time to fully appreciate what he had to lose, but he understood it now and the fear of it curved his shoulders in and kept his eyes glued to the floor until Amilyn softly spoke his name.

“Kylo, why did your parents first send you away?”

He blinked at her for a moment, considering her question. “I was a brat, I guess. Too much money and not enough supervision, so I did what rich brats do. I got drunk and smoked weed and chased after girls…”

“Is that all?”

“I had a temper,” he admitted. “They hadn’t told me what to do very much and by the time they figured out what was happening and tried to reign me in, I wasn’t too happy about it.”

He looked back at the floor, exhaling on a deep breath that made him shudder and his lower lip tremble.

“Kylo,” she said, waiting for him to look up and meet her eyes. “Can you confirm the truth of what we’ve heard from the witnesses on the stand today? About what happened after your parents sent you to live with your uncle?”

He nodded, clearing his throat. “Yes, I can.”

“The things that they said, that’s the way it happened to the best of your recollection?”

“Yes, ma’am, it is,” he confirmed.

“How would you describe your mental state the night that Han Solo confronted you?”

“Unstable,” he said clearly. “I wanted to go home but I didn’t believe that was possible.”

“Why is that?”

“I couldn’t go back to Luke’s after what he’d done, and I didn’t think they’d let me go home because I was even worse than I was when they’d sent me away. I drank more, did harder drugs, got paid for the sex and the violence.”

“Why didn’t you just lie about that? So they’d let you come home?”

“Snoke was going to tell them everything I’d done,” he said miserably. “Everyone I’d hurt, everyone he’d whored me out to, all of it.”

“In your mind, if you went with your father that night…”

“I would have absolutely been sent back to Luke.”

“Could you have told them about what happened with Luke?”

He laughed, but it was a dry sound, humorless and cynical. “My word against Luke Skywalker? He was a legend, the pinnacle of holiness, and I was teen with anger problems and a history of lying.”

“You’d been dishonest with them in the past?”

“Most of us had lied to our parents, in one way or another. Ever heard the story of the boy who cried wolf? No one cares when you’re being eaten if they don’t believe it’s happening.”

“If you couldn’t go home, why didn’t you just leave? Walk away?”

“I  _ tried,”  _ he said, pressing his hands to his face and leaving red blotches on his skin from the pressure. “He’d promised my mother that he’d bring me home and he wasn’t listening when I told him I couldn’t do that.”

“So you decided to kill him?”

“I didn’t  _ decide _ ,” Kylo said, looking at her pleadingly, begging her with his eyes to believe him. “I was talking to him and he grabbed me, he was trying to pull me to the car…I don’t even remember what happened. He was on the ground and there was blood everywhere- it was on him, on me, on the ground…so much blood.”

“You don’t remember stabbing him?”

“No, I don’t but I know I must have because we were the only ones in the alley.”

“What did you do after you realized that you’d stabbed him? Why didn’t you call for help?”

“I…” He shifted restlessly, tears sliding unnoticed down his face. “I don’t know,” he admitted weakly. “He was just lying there and there was so much blood and his eyes were open and just staring at me. I screamed and screamed but no one came, not for a long time, not till the police showed up in the morning and they arrested me.”

“How did you feel when you realized what happened? That your father was dead?”

His lips parted but no sound came out as he stared at her, swallowing reflexively over and over again as he tried to gain control of his voice.

“Kylo?”

“I was numb,” he whispered. “I couldn’t understand it and some days I still don’t. It doesn’t feel real, even though I can picture it in my head. It feels like a dream that I can’t get away from.”

“Do you regret what you did?”

“I would give anything to go back and change what happened,” he said, looking at the ground again. “I didn’t just kill my father…what I did devastated my mother. I destroyed my family, and they didn’t deserve it. They weren’t perfect, but they didn’t deserve  _ that _ ,” he repeated.

“If you were given a second chance to be free in society, what would you do with it?”

He looked up, past Amilyn and the empty table to where Rey was seated on the bench between Bazine and her father. His eyes were wet still but they were hot with purpose, determined and made of steel.

“I would spend the rest of my life proving that I’m sorry,” he said fiercely. “I would  _ atone, _ make amends to everyone I hurt by being in prison and use every breath I took to make up for the ones I stole from my father.”

“Thank you, Kylo,” Amilyn said, smiling at him encouragingly as she gestured to him that he could step down. “You may return to your seat.”

“Was that your last witness?” Judge Tano asked, satisfied when Amilyn nodded. “I’ve heard a great deal of information this morning and I have a lot to consider in the matter of appropriate sentencing. You’ll be called back when I’ve reached a decision.”

She tapped the gavel and left the room without looking back, giving no indication of which way her thoughts were leaning. The guards removed Kylo from the room as quickly as before, but this time he looked over his shoulder as he went, his eyes meeting hers as he shuffled out the door and out of sight. His lips were turned up in a hopeful smile, but his eyes reflected the same fear and sadness that she felt inside.

“Well,” Amilyn said, turning to face them all as she gathered up her papers and slipped them into her briefcase, “there’s nothing left to do but wait.”

“How long?” Rey asked quickly. “How long will it be until she decides?”

“It could be days,” Amilyn said, holding up a hand to silence them all before they could protest, “but I doubt that it will be. Judge Tano is ruthless and painfully meticulous, but she doesn’t linger over decisions. We’ll get some lunch and then come back to wait.”

“Should we leave?” Rey asked nervously, glancing back at the door that led to the judge’s chambers.

“Her decision won’t be made that quickly,” Amilyn assured her, “and the sentencing can be very emotional, best not to do it on an empty stomach.”

“Right,” Rey muttered, getting to her feet and following Amilyn out of the courtroom and back down the stairs. It was only when they reached the bottom floor and turned toward the front doors that she remembered the crowd of reports waiting for her outside.

“Oh,” she said, stopping abruptly so that Rose and Finn walked into the back of her, bumping her forward an extra step as she swore quietly under her breath. “I can’t go out there,” she said, wincing at the thought of dodging the questions and the pushy reporters again to leave and then to come back. She’d already have to face them in the return to the car and didn’t think she had it in her to do any more than that.

Amilyn sighed. “I forgot about that,” she admitted. “They won’t let us bring food back to you, no outside food is allowed in the courthouse.”

“I understand,” Rey said, pasting a smile on her face that felt awkward and unnatural. “I think I’ll get something out of the vending machine upstairs if I get hungry. Not really sure I feel up to eating right now, anyway.”

They stood in the open foyer for several minutes, arguing quietly about who should stay behind with her as the flow of people coming and going flowed around them. No one noticed their small group or cared how pale Rey knew she must be as the anxiety of waiting stretched every minute into an eternity.

“I’m fine to wait alone,” she repeated. “If the rest of you that the reporters recognize all huddle behind the ones they don’t, they might not even see you. You need to eat,” she urged.

“I’ll go out first,” Amilyn said. “I’m used to dealing with them and I’ll make an announcement that we’re waiting now for a sentence. Everyone else can slip by while they’re distracted.”

“See?” Rey said firmly. “It’ll be fine.”

In the end, everyone went except her father, who couldn’t be budged. He sat beside her on the bench upstairs, eating a candy bar from the vending machine and sipping on a ridiculously expensive bottle of water.

Rey held hers in her hand, the candy forgotten by her thigh on the bench as she picked at the label on the bottle. She’d peeled it off in tiny pieces and then folded each of those into meaningless shapes, a pile of shiny paper as a testament to her nerves, before the others came back from lunch.

They didn’t speak as they settled into the other benches in the hallway and slid into their own quiet waiting. They stared at the floor, picked lint off their sleeves, flicked aimlessly through social media on their phones. Each cough or sniffle carried down the long quiet hallways, echoing off the wood paneling and down into the high-ceilinged foyer below.

They weren’t the only ones waiting, but Rey felt them with her like all of them existed in the same place, the same small bubble that drifted along outside of time and space. It consisted of nothing but them, the cheap carpet with its oddly creeping shadows, and waiting.

“She might not make a decision today,” Amilyn reminded them, not for the first time but, Rey realized as she glanced at the time on her phone and saw it was after four, probably for the last time.

She was steeling herself for that, for having to come back here again tomorrow for more waiting after pacing the floor for all night, when Amilyn’s phone dinged in her hand. She peered down at it, brow furrowed, then looked directly at Rey.

“It’s time,” she said gently. “The judge has made her decision.”

Rey nodded, words failing her as her legs turned to liquid and harsh buzzing filled her ears, drowning out everyone’s words as they led her blindly into the courtroom. She couldn’t think, couldn’t feel anything except a rising urge to vomit that she wasn’t sure she’d be able to breathe her way through.

Would the judge hold her in contempt if she threw up all over the carpet?

She swallowed, bile and terror coloring the flavor of her tongue and her mouth as dry as her fingers and toes were numb.

Her father had to hold her arm to steady her when Judge Tano reentered the courtroom- she couldn’t hold her body upright on her own.

There was no air on the room when she asked Kylo to stand to receive his sentence.

Rey didn’t even remember them leading him back in. When had he gotten here? How long had she been oblivious to the world around her as she counted her breaths-  _ one, two, three, four _ \- to keep from screaming?

“This was a very serious crime,” the judge began, her gaze traveling from Kylo to the lawyers at each table. “The magnitude of which correctly led the previous court to consider life in prison as an appropriate sentence.”

Rey sucked in air through her nose, her body floating, untethered, as she tried to understand the words that would give her hope or turn everything to ash.

“A murder this violent, committed by someone as close to the victim as his own son, is a terrible tragedy, and the public must be protected.”

Rey was sobbing quietly, her knuckles pressed to her mouth to stifle the sounds until she tasted her own blood on her tongue. Pryde was looking quite smug at his table and Amilyn was rubbing Kylo’s arm as he stared straight ahead, unmoving. If he was crying, too, Rey couldn’t tell from her spot on the bench behind him.

“However,” the judge continued, “circumstances in this case are extenuating and it is my professional opinion that a blatant miscarriage of justice that occurred at this young man’s original trial. The sitting judge’s refusal to allow the jury to hear crucial evidence about a history of abuse and the defendant’s state of mind at the time of the murder would be enough to warrant an appeal.”

Pryde was looking a lot less smug, his self-satisfied smirk starting to droop at the corners.

“Instead, he stands before me now, seeking a reexamination of the sentencing in his case. I am to reconsider the appropriateness of him serving a life sentence without parole, decide for myself if I believe that there is a chance for him to safely reenter society and how much he should be punished for his actions of that fateful night.”

She sighed and pressed her hand to the bridge of her nose. Rey stopped breathing entirely, unable to force her lungs to work or heart to slow its frantic beat.

“My answer to the first question is that I do not believe that he would be a danger to others outside of those particular circumstances and that keeping him in prison is not necessary to ensure the public safety,” she said, looking at Kylo as he stood absolutely still except for the rapid rise and fall of his chest.

His lips were tinged blue at the corners, the air passing through his panicked lungs too quickly to provide him the oxygen he needed. His emotions were written clearly on his face, not the blank slate stare of so many years ago, but the terrified look of a man with everything to lose.

“Which brings me to the question of punishment and what is fair in exchange for the life he stole,” the judge continued. “Something must be given, surely, but no member of the victim’s family has come forward to urge that this man remains imprisoned and his crime was committed while he was a minor in considerable distress. It is for these reasons that I have chosen to alter the sentence that he was given at his original trial.”

Rey’s mind raced, almost unable to comprehend that this meant he would walk out of that prison someday and her thoughts forging ahead to count how old she would be if he got a forty-year sentence… thirty… twenty-five…what if he only got  _ fifteen  _ when he’d already served thirteen of those years…

“It is my decision that the petitioner in this case have his sentence reduced, and that the new sentence of twelve years be satisfied with the time he has already served in prison.”

Amilyn was gripping Kylo’s arm so tightly that her knuckles were white as the judge wished them all a good day and tapped her gavel to dismiss them. She began whispering to him, quick and excited, as he looked down at her in stunned silence.

“What does that mean?” Rey demanded, leaning forward over the short barrier that separated them to grab Amilyn by the sleeve. “ _ What does that mean _ ?” she repeated, afraid to believe what her mind was telling her.

“It means we won and he’s coming home,” Amilyn said, hugging Kylo fiercely as the guards moved forward to take him away.

“Then why are they taking him?” Rey asked, trying urgently so slide by the others as she followed Kylo toward the exit door. She came up short when Rose stepped in front of her, Amilyn’s instructions to keep her from following more intimidating than Rey’s anger at being corralled.

“He has to go back.” Amilyn explained. “It’s normal for them to return him to the prison to collect his belongings while they process his release. The judge’s office will file the paperwork, and he should walk out a free man within the next twenty-four hours.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's important for me to note that the chances of this resentencing hearing going this way are basically nonexistent. It's much more likely that he would have been given a reduced sentence that would have allowed him to seek parole at some point in the future, possibly even still a life sentence with the possibility of parole instead of without, but after thinking about it for a long time I decided to bend that reality a little so that they could be together sooner. Forcing her to wait further years and having him go through parole hearings would have been more accurate but not as satisfying in a fictional story.


	22. Let's Go Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free- John 8:32

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am very excited to be able to start sharing the next part of the story with you! We aren't quite to the smuttiness yet but it is coming very soon and I know that's what everyone is waiting for.
> 
> TW// Very brief mention of Han's death and the depiction of what could be considered the beginnings of a mild panic attack. I don't think there's much in this one but as always if you feel I have missed something please let me know!
> 
> Thank you once again to AuroraReylo for being my amazing Beta and cheerleader for this story! Your help had been so vital to keeping me on track!
> 
> I did adjust the chapter count just a bit but that is always subject to change. I try to keep it as close as I can to my current estimates and sometimes it takes me a little more or a little less time to develop certain things than I thought so I have to change it again.

Kylo sat on his bunk, watching the sun creep in through the window and listening to the steady monotonous drip of water in the sink. He’d listened to that drip for more years than he could remember. It was there at night when he went to sleep and it was there in the morning when he woke up.

When it had first started it had been a nuisance, an irritation that had only deepened when he’d realized that the prison had no intention of fixing it unless it flooded the whole damn cell. Hux had complained about it bitterly when he’d been moved in, about the constant repetitive noise and how it made it impossible to sleep or think or breathe without feeling like insanity was one splash away and stored just inside the eardrums.

He wasn’t sure at all how he would be able to sleep without it now.

Like everything else about this place, it had slowly gone from something he hated, to something he tolerated, to something that was simply there. It was the way things were and, more often than not, there was no sense in feeling anything about it one way or another.

They all hated it, groaned about it, wished they could be somewhere else, but they were resigned, especially those like him who had known that this was all there’d ever be, to the inevitability of it. He imagined it was similar to the way his parents had half-heartedly complained about traffic or taxes- unpleasant necessities that shaped their daily lives.

What would they have done, he wondered, if one day those things had just ceased to exist? Would they have felt like he did now? A heady mixture of excitement and trepidation, freedom and anxiety?

He’d hoped to get out someday, but he hadn’t expected it to be today. Maybe in a year or five, when he would have more time to prepare and think and plan for his life after prison now that there was going to be an after.

And there was actually going to be an _after_.

He still wasn’t sure he believed it, wasn’t sure that it wasn’t a dream that his mind had conjured. Would the guards come to his cell to release him in a few hours like they’d promised, or would they come to tell him that it had been a mistake, that he had to go back and do it all again because it had been a fantasy?

He remembered it all clearly.

Walking into the courtroom with his hands and ankles chained and the shame of having Rey and her family, her friends see him that way. Seeing Bazine and Mitaka and the Knights as they’d all sat in that stupid fucking witness box and paraded his sins and his failures out into the light for everyone to see.

He’d had to hear about the abortion from Bazine’s own lips again and see the pain in her eyes. The pain it had caused Mitaka and the others to relive their own abuses as they had explained his.

It had been agonizing to hear it all and have things he’d tried so hard not to think about for so long pulled to the front of his mind in excruciating detail.

Bazine and the child they’d lost.

Luke.

Snoke.

 _Han_ and the blood he’d never managed to wash off his conscience.

And Rey, sitting on the bench behind him so close he could almost feel her with her hands clasped in her laps and her eyes wide like a trapped animal’s in her pale face.

He hated that she’d been there to hear it, hated that it had all spilled out to hurt her too, but he’d known he couldn’t keep her away. When he’d asked Amilyn to try and talk her out of it she’d laughed in his face.

Nothing kept Rey from doing what she wanted to do, what she thought was right.

In the end, he’d been glad she’d been there. When the judge had asked him to stand and read him the sentence that would change his life, he’d been glad that she was standing just behind him.

The first time, when he was too young to understand the cost of it as they’d taken his life away, he’d been numb with nothing left to lose. This time, there had been Rey and he’d closed his eyes and thought of her, her warmth and her stubbornness and her determination, her beautiful skin so close to his that he could have reached out and caressed her cheek.

The judge had given him a chance to live, but Rey had already given him a reason.

Judge Tano had said time served, and then they’d led him away to wait, to endure a lifetime of silence and contemplation as he stared at the walls of his prison and wondered what was going to happen next.

He tried to silence the part of him that feared that Rey might not come today. That he might walk out the doors to an empty parking lot and a bus that would carry him away from here and to nothing.

Maybe she, too, had expected another year or five to prepare and she just wouldn’t be ready.

The thought kept his mind occupied, chasing itself in fearful circles as they came to get him and his small box of personal items from his cell and escorted him to the small area where they did out-processing. He was given a change of clothes- a plain white T-shirt and simple, inexpensive jeans, boots- and an envelope with a fifty dollar bill- his 'gate money' that was supposed to help him get settled- and a variety of smaller bills that the small woman behind the desk explained was the remainder of what had been in his commissary account.

“There will be someone here to pick you up? So, you won’t need a bus ticket or a ride to the station, right?” She was curt, not looking at him as she processed his paperwork.

He swallowed hard, hands shaking as he considered what would happen if Rey didn’t come. “She’s supposed to be…I mean, she said she would…” He trailed off, swallowing again when the woman pierced him with an impatient look. “Yes,” he said, more firmly. “Yes, someone is coming.”

She nodded, signing the last form in the stack with a flourish. “You’ll be escorted out the front and you’ll need to leave the premises immediately.”

He nodded, handing over his prison garb and picking up the box contained all of the evidence of the last thirteen years of his life- some art and letters from Rey. He was supposed to get his personal items back, the things that he’d had on him when he was arrested, but they shrugged at him and he knew the only thing that he’d had in his pockets that night was a knife and it would stay locked up as evidence in a murder case in some storage unit owned by the state of Texas.

He followed the guard out and down the endless passageway, each set of doors that he passed through clanging shut behind him with the same feeling of finality that he’d had when he’d first come in.

It should have been liberating, but it made his knees quake.

The guard barely waited for him to be fully through the last set of doors before pulling it closed with a click and he walked out of the prison and into the bright light of midafternoon. There were no chains on his wrists and the jeans they’d given him felt odd and tight around his waist after so many years of wearing nothing but loose jumpsuits.

He scanned the parking lot and pushed a hand through his hair as tried to figure out what to do next. The erratic racing beat of his heart echoed in his ears, drowning out the sounds of birds in the trees and the far-off bark of a dog.

There’s a rising panic, a feeling of disconnectedness that starts in his ears and spreads until it reaches his fingers and his toes and he doesn’t know what to do or where to go and he can’t go back inside and he can’t _breathe_ , either…

And then she was there, standing on the other side of the small driveway between the sidewalk and the first row of parked cars, wearing a blue sundress and a smile as she calmed his pounding heart and soothed his ragged nerves.

He sighed, flexing his fingers at his sides as the feeling returned to them and watching her cautiously as she shifted uneasily from foot to foot, bottom lip caught between the white of her teeth.

There’d always been something between them- guards, handcuffs, walls- and all of the times that he’d told her that he couldn’t wait to find out what she tasted like or see her pretty little body spread out under his so he could finally feel her suddenly seemed like nothing more than a fantasy.

How could he do that, when he couldn’t even cross the distance between them now?

She took half a tentative step forward and he did the only thing he could think to do, the thing he had done the first time she’d come to visit him and she'd been looking at him with eagerness and uncertainty. He opened his arms and waited.

There was a quick flick of a glance, right then left as she looked for cars passing in the parking lot, then she bolted, her feet crossing the space in three loose limbed bounding steps and then flinging herself into his chest with such force that he took a step back to steady them as his arms came around her to catch and hold.

She stayed there for several heartbeats, her face pressed against his chest as they took in each other’s familiar warmth and comforting smells, but it was no longer enough and when she tipped back her head and looked up at him with wide wet eyes full of joy and pink lips parted in welcome, there was nothing he could do but press his mouth to hers.

He’d expected it to be soft and tender, when he’d imagined this moment in his mind, but she met his kiss with an enthusiasm that surprised him. There was inexperience in the way her lips fit against his, her hands coming up to grip his face and hold him steady as she pressed her face to his just a little too hard, lips barely parted, but he pulled her close and wiggled his head to settle against her mouth more comfortably.

There would be time for her to learn the finer points of kissing and for him to discover the taste of her and the deliciously warm contours of the insides of her mouth- for now all that mattered was that he was out where he could hold her for as long as he wanted and feel the soft shape of her in his arms and feel the soft pliability of her lips and smell of the sweet floral fragrance of her perfume in air that didn’t carry the faint traces of bleach and sweat.

He pulled away, rubbing his cheek on her hair as she laughed wetly and wiped the tears from her cheeks. The trembling smile she gave him was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen, and he wanted to spend the rest of his life kissing her, but there were better places than here to do that.

“Come on,” she said, grabbing his hand and leading him across the parking lot. “Let’s go home.”

_Home_

Did she consider her home to be his? Would he be staying with her now that he didn’t have to stay here?

The suddenness of it all left him with many questions that they hadn’t had time to discuss and he waited until he’d settled into the passenger seat of her little blue sedan to ask her.

“Is that where we’re going? Your apartment?”

She looked at him quizzically, reaching for his hand as she turned out of the parking lot and onto the open highway. It was rural and there wasn’t much to see, but he found himself looking out the window at the sights of passing fields and cows as much as he did her perfectly freckled nose as she answered him.

“My apartment,” she agreed, her brows drawing together with sudden uncertainty. “Unless there’s somewhere else you’d rather go?”

“No,” he said quickly. “I just…We hadn’t talked about and I didn’t want to assume. I don’t know how your dad would feel, you know, about me going there.”

She frowned, mouth twisting on a grimace and cheeks pinking- her father had to suspect, after all, that their feelings for each other were far from chaste and they would likely be sharing her bed at some point- before she shrugged. “He’s not going to be thrilled with every decision I make but if you want to be with me then I want you there.”

He caught the hesitation, the quick uncertain glance.

“Rey...baby,” he said quietly, pressing her knuckles to his lips for a kiss that lingered. “There is nowhere I would rather be than with you.”

“Good.” She smiled, setting back in her seat, and relaxing just a bit. “We’ll have to hide you just a bit for a while since you aren’t on my lease but if I pick up some overtime shifts before the lease expires, I’ll have enough saved up for us to move when it runs out.”

“Is your apartment not big enough?”

She pulled up to a stop sign, making a show of looking both ways as she subtly avoided his question.

“Rey?”

“It’s big enough,” she said. “But we need a place where we can put you on the lease. You’re not really supposed to have people there that aren’t because most places don’t want anyone living there who hasn’t passed a background check. For the safety of the other residents, you know?”

“Background check,” he repeated slowly. “So, they won’t put me on the lease at your apartment, even if I have a job by then, because…”

“Because you have a felony on your record,” she said quickly. “It doesn’t matter which kind.”

“I see,” he said quietly, watching her face as she bit her lip and then turned back to him again, her smile overbright.

“Don’t worry about it,” she said, fiercely. “There are places that let people with felonies move in and we’ll find one.”

“You’re going to move into an apartment complex where all the people who just got out of prison live because they can’t live anywhere else?”

“Yes,” she said. “And, yes, it’s probably slightly more dangerous than my current complex because most of the people that run them look the other way on pretty much anything if you can afford the ridiculous amount that they charge for rent but eventually we’ll buy a house and then it’ll be fine.”

“It’s okay,” he agreed. “We can buy a house.”

“Exactly,” she said, giving him a vigorous and determined nod. “It may take some time on what I make, probably not until after I finish school and get a better job, actually, but it’s not impossible.”

“Why would we be doing it only on the money you make?” he asked, forgetting momentarily what he had been about to tell her.

She swallowed and squeezed his hand. “Probably not _entirely_ but…Well, it’s just that it can be hard to get a job with a felony on your record, that’s all. I don’t want you to feel pressured or think I’m going to be mad if it takes a while for you to find something. You should take some time, anyway, and just get used to being out. See some stuff, watch some movies, eat some ice cream and cookies and McDonald’s.”

He sat up straighter in his seat, distracted by the endless possibilities. “Can we?”

“Can we what?”

“Eat McDonald’s? Or whatever? Just something that’s not…”

“Not prison food? Sure, there’s a bunch of places that we can stop between here and my… _our_ …apartment.”

Twenty minutes later he was peeling the wrapper off a cheeseburger and sipping Coke through a cheap plastic straw. She’d gone through the drive through, deciding not to go in because she didn’t want the first place he went as a free man to be the inside of a greasy fast-food restaurant. Instead, she’d set the bag in his lap and handed him his cup and the straws as she’d driven down the street to a small green park where she’d kissed him again, more softly, in the shade of a big tree at the edge of the parking lot and then led him over to a picnic bench.

The air smelled of French fry grease, summer heat and freshly cut grass, simple luxuries that he’d thought he’d never experience again. It took all of his restraint to not lie down on the grass at his feet and stay there all day as the sun crept over his body.

“I can’t believe you’re actually here,” she said quietly, watching him from across the table with a dreamy smile on her face. “It doesn’t seem possible.”

“I’m here because you gave me hope and a reason to fight for my life when I got the chance. I’m going to take care of you,” he promised. “I’m going to give you every single thing you’ve ever wanted and love you for the rest of your life.”

“I know,” she agreed, sighing softly.

“I mean it,” he insisted. “I’m going to buy you a house and pay for your school and anything else you need. I don’t ever want you to have to worry about anything.”

Her brows creased and she shook her head slightly, watching a line of ants parade across the tabletop, collecting what they could from a spilled drop of red liquid from someone else’s lunch. “Don’t put that kind of pressure on yourself. Our future isn’t going to be easy and we’ll probably spend more time eating cheap ramen than McDonald’s, but we’ll figure it out together.”

He reached for her hand, wrapping his fingers around hers and caressing the knuckles with his thumb. “My mother figured it out for us.”

She looked up, teeth nipping down on the bottom lip that he still wanted to run his tongue over. She deserved more than what he had to give, she deserved _everything_ , but knowing that she would have been willing to live with so much less made him all the more eager to give it to her.

“Leia?” she asked. “What do you mean?”

“I mean that I talked to Amilyn last night and apparently my grandfather left me a trust fund that Mom never bothered to tell me about. Now that I’m an adult and out of prison, it’s mine.”

“What? She was going to let you rot without a lawyer when you had money that was rightfully yours?” There was bitter spark in her eyes and her mouth was pressed in a thin and hostile line.

“Amilyn was just as shocked when Leia asked her to pass along the information to me, but I’m honestly not surprised. Mother doesn’t see the world in shades of gray. It’s either right or it’s wrong. I’ve almost always been wrong as far as she was concerned.”

“Still,” Rey said hotly. “That’s not how a mother should behave. She should be on your side, helping you, protecting you. If she had been, things might have been different.”

“They might,” he agreed. “But they weren’t and now I’m out and I’ve got you and my money to take care of you.” He grinned at her and she smiled back, sighing at the happiness he couldn’t contain when he threw back his head and laughed. “We’ve got a trust fund, baby!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The process for prisoner release varies by state and local laws. Most provide clothing if the family hasn't sent any to the facility by the release date, transportation if there is no one available to pick up the inmate (and they are going home and not to a halfway house), and some amount of 'gate money' that is intended to be used for immediate necessities upon release. Some states require inmates to go to halfway houses when they are released as a way of easing their transitions back to life outside prison but Texas is not one of them. Texas inmates go to halfway houses only if they have nowhere else to go. Since Kylo has Rey, he was released directly from the prison and sent to live with her. He will not have to report to a parole officer since he is considered to have served his sentence in full, but there are many things that would be impacted by having a felony conviction on his record with employment and housing especially difficult to obtain.


	23. I Want This

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Like a lily among the thorns is my darling among the young women- Song of Solomon 2:2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to my truly amazing Beta, AuroraReylo, for helping me figure all this out, and to the Reylo Creatives Discord server for helping me brainstorm several chapters of smut. 
> 
> And thank you to all of you for reading this and leaving such amazing comments ❤❤
> 
> TW // This chapter contains sexual contact between Rey and Kylo. Many of the chapters after this point will be NSFW. There is mention of Kylo's past sexual history and Rey's insecurity and lack of experience. As always, please let me know if you feel that I missed something!

It was late afternoon when she parked the car in the parking lot of an apartment complex that she said was the best she could afford on her meager paycheck this close to campus. The paint on the buildings was an unremarkable brown, peeling a bit at the edges of the small balconies that line the sides of each one. Kylo counted five stories from the ground to the top windows and there were no elevators here. She lived at the top, so he knew she’d hauled up groceries and laundry by herself, her arms and legs working overtime in the heat of the summer, with nothing between her and the sweltering oppression of the sun but the shade and the occasional stir of air in the breezeway.

“It’s not much,” she said, walking around the front of her car to take his hand and tug him along the sidewalk between the buildings. “But there’s a pool and a little workout room that almost never has anyone else in it.”

He nodded, turning his head to look through the glass at the neat little row of treadmills and then beyond that to the pool where blue water glimmered and children splashed and squealed as their parents watched indulgently. No one looked up, or paid them any attention at all, and it was suddenly strange how out of place he felt in a world that continued to move along without him when the prison doors had clanged shut.

“We can go swimming,” she said hopefully, watching the line of his gaze. “It’s too hot to do anything else outside right now, but we could definitely go swimming tomorrow, if you want.”

The letter she’d sent him when they first started writing flicked through his mind, the one where she’d worried that her summer had passed by without anything special. He clutches at that thought, the idea that he can go swimming with her tomorrow if he wants to almost enough to steal the breath from his chest.

“I’ll need to get a bathing suit,” he told her as he followed her into the breezeway of one of the buildings nearest to the pool. He made a mental note of the large number on the side- hers was building 2- so he wouldn't get lost if he had to go outside for anything. When was the last time he had to worry about remembering or finding his way around someplace that wasn’t familiar?

She laughed, her voice echoing in the small space as they climbed the staircase and passed the first landing. “You’re going to need everything. Pants and shirts, socks, underwear. We’ll go shopping.”

“Don’t you have class tomorrow? Work? Well, maybe fuck work, but class?”

She tossed a grin back over her shoulder as she dug for her keys. “I already let them know that I would be out for the rest of the week. I’ll do the homework from right here for now, give you a few days to get settled.”

He didn’t answer-what is there to say to her besides another whispered “I love you” and he’d said that a thousand time already today- and she turned back to fit the key into the lock and push the shoor open with her shoulder.

He was hesitant as he followed her inside, unsure about how she’d react to having him in a space that was purely hers. She’d said that the apartment was theirs, but she’s been living here alone for months and they’d no way of knowing how quickly he’d be here.

The inside was small, the door opening to a tiny living room on the left and a miniscule eat-in kitchen on the right. There was a single hallway that he assumed led the bedroom and bathroom and a sliding glass door that opened onto a balcony that he doubted was large enough for the two of them to both stand on at the same time.

She hung her keys on a hook by the door, reaching around behind him to flick the locks and give the door a tug to make sure it was closed securely as she toed off her shoes.

“Well, this is it,” she said, spreading her arms wide to encompass all of the small space as she began to walk, chattering about the apartment and expecting him to follow.

Her living room was tidy and the furniture was tasteful- a small dark blue couch with a low coffee table and a flat screen TV on the opposite wall- but that wasn’t what caught his attention as he looked around the room.

“The couch is a little small for you, probably,” she said, eyeing it skeptically as he stood next to it, “but we can get a bigger one when we move…”

“Rey,” he said, interrupting her and waiting until her voice trailed away to point at the wall behind the couch. “You kept all of these?”

His art lined the wall, arranged neatly in rows of thin black frames. The pieces were familiar, and he saw with a quick sweeping glance that she’d grouped each of them together with others that had similar themes and colors so that it blended from black and white on the top right to a furious explosion of color on the bottom left.

She nodded, tipping her head to look at her arrangement. “There’s more in the bedroom and the hallway,” she confirmed, taking his hand and leading him through the rest of the apartment, showing him the art that she’d hung and the places where she kept pictures of him and the two of them together in frames on the dresser beside her bed.

If he’d been worried about invading space that belonged to her, it faded in the face of just how much of him was already here.

“Do you like it?” she asked, standing in her bedroom with her thigh pressed against a comforter that had blue and yellow roses on it. She was nervous, he realized, afraid that he wouldn’t like her home or the things that were important to her.

“I love it,” he said, smiling as she relaxed with a nearly imperceptible sigh. “I’m sure you’ll be easier to live with than Hux.”

She chuckled at that, curling her legs to sit on the end of her bed and tugging a pillow into her lap. “Was he upset that you were getting out?”

“Not exactly,” he told her, thinking back to his cellmate’s resigned expression. “Hux is pretty cold but even for him it can be difficult getting a new cellmate and not knowing anything about them.”

“Is it scary? Not knowing what kind of person you’ll be forced to sleep next to?”

He sighed, remembering the first nights in his bunk with a stranger sleeping a few narrow feet away. “It can be,” he admitted. “People get stabbed or…worse. Hux was decent and minded his business as long as I minded mine. He just wants to do his time and get out so he can take care of his little brother.”

She nodded, a line of worry forming between her brows as her lips turned down thoughtfully at the corners. He knew she was going to start carrying around anxiety about his former cellmate and shook his head wonderingly at the softness of her heart.

Her cell phone rang from the living room and she smiled apologetically as she hurried back down the hallway to answer. This was the third call since they’d left the prison and he suspected that it was her father or her friends calling to make sure she was still alive and he hadn’t done something horrible to her. They’d sat beside her at the hearing, but he knew they didn’t trust him completely the way that Rey did, so he lingered in the bedroom, giving her privacy to reassure whoever was calling without him listening at her elbow.

Her voice drifted through the small apartment, the sliver of a laugh telling him that whatever they were talking about on the phone hadn’t upset her. He listened absently as she talked, his eyes settling on the bed that sat beneath the room’s lone window.

She’d brought him here with the expectation that he would stay and he thought- hoped- that she meant for him to share that bed with her. If not right away, then at some point. Her letters and the phone calls they’d shared over the months that had passed had been heated, as explicit as they could be under the circumstances, but he knew about Rey’s upbringing and her faith. They’d never talked about it, another thing he’d assumed wrongly that they’d have more time to work out between them, but he knew that she’s always intended to wait until she was married, and he suspected that would still be true now, even if she did bring him here.

He jumped, a guilty flush spreading over his face when she said his name quietly from behind him and turned to find her leaning against the door jamb, her bottom lip caught between her teeth as she watched him.

“Sorry,” he mumbled, raking his hand through his hair. “I just…I was just wondering…”

“Where you’d be sleeping?”

“Yeah,” he admitted.

“Where do you want to sleep?” she countered, her eyes wide and uncertain, like she was as worried as he was that the answer he gave would be the wrong one.

He swallowed hard, his gaze darting to the gleam of white teeth in the pink skin of her lip. “Wherever you are,” he said, deciding that it was better to be damned for the truth than a lie.

The tension drained from her shoulders and she smiled, still uncertain but no longer as on edge as she had been a moment before. “Yeah?”

“Did you…think I wouldn’t want to?”

She nodded. “I wasn’t sure. I mean, I know you said  _ things _ …well, we  _ both _ said things…but that was before…” She trailed off, seeming to realize that she was rambling, and blushed.

“I said  _ things _ ,” he repeated, his body stirring at the flush in her cheeks and the warm look in her eyes. “Things like what?”

“ _ Things _ ,” she insisted, shaking her head slightly as he crossed the room and settled a hand on either of her hips. She was looking up at him, her head tipped back to keep her eyes locked on his.

“Things like how I wanted to kiss you?” he asked, leaning down until he could sweep his lips over hers, the barest brush of skin with the heaviest hint of promise.

She nodded, mouth parted in silent surprise and pupils blown wide as she trembled helplessly.

“That I wanted to taste you?” he continued, taking advantage of the part in her lips to provide entrance for his tongue as it caressed hers. Her fingers tightened spasmodically on his arms, gripping to hold herself steady as she leaned into him and chased his mouth with hers as he pulled away.

“I want so much more than that,” he promised, “but I want you to be sure. We’re not married yet and…”

“Yet?” she asked, tipping her face to look at him, her brows lifted in surprise.

“Yet,” he said firmly. He’d ask her soon, for real, with some over the top romantic gesture and the biggest fucking diamond he could buy, but for now he wanted her to know that that’s  _ exactly _ what this was. A forever kind of thing. “I love you, Rey.”

“I love you, too,” she said, reaching up tiptoe to press her lips against his cheek as fingers rubbed lightly at one curl of his hair. “And that’s why I don’t want to wait. You’re it for me, there’s not going to be anyone else, and I’m not ashamed of it, of wanting you.”

He breathed, an intentionally controlled soft and slow inhale and exhale as her meaning entered his mind and went straight to his body. Still, it hadn’t been that long ago that she’d been unable to even speak the names of her own body parts out loud. “I’m glad you’re not ashamed of it,” he said cautiously. “But I won’t ask you to do anything that you’re not ready for.”

“I’m ready,” she insisted. “I didn’t have time to go to the clinic for birth control yet, but I bought condoms.”

“You did?” He tried to imagine it, how much determination it must have taken for her to overcome her shyness and buy condoms from the store.

“Yeah,” she said, and he heard the edge of fierce determination in the statement. “I want this.”

She leaned into him eagerly when he tightened his arms around her and pulled her back up on tiptoe to slot his mouth over hers again.

She moaned, a small soft sound that was somehow fragile, a mixture of unabashed desire and nervous anticipation. He wanted to be slow, gentle, because he knew that she’d never been touched and he didn’t want to rush, didn’t want to frighten her by going too fast or expecting too much, so he kissed her slowly and gave her time to adjust to the feeling. She was a quick learner, and it didn’t take her long to learn to soften her lips against him and match the erotic movement of his tongue.

She shifted closer, pressing against him on instinct, and froze when the hard evidence of his arousal unmistakably rubbed into her stomach.

“I’m sorry,” he said quickly, pulling away as she looked down at him and then back up with pink cheeks.

“No,” she said, her hands holding fistfuls of the t-shirt the prison had given him so he couldn’t move any further away. “It’s just…is that because of me?”

“Yes,” he breathed, watching intently as her eyes widened and then glanced back down at the straining bulge in his jeans.

“It’s bigger than I expected,” she said timidly, startling a laugh out of him.

“I won’t hurt you,” he promised, trying to focus on her concerns and not his own stroked ego. “If you're sure you want this, I’ll make it good for you, baby, I swear.”

“But what about you?”

“What about me?” he asked, not understanding the thoughts that had her looking suddenly insecure.

“You’ve done this before,” she said quietly. “With Bazine and all the others. What if…what if I’m not good at it? What if you don’t like it with me?”

Panic flooded his mind when a shimmering tear slipped from the corner of her eye to pave a wet path down her cheek and he erased it with his thumb as she looked at his chest and refused to meet his gaze.

“Baby, please look at me,” he beseeched, bending down and trying to peek back up at her face until she finally sniffled and cast a quick glance in his direction. “Nothing that happened with anyone else will ever mean as much to me as doing it with you. You’re beautiful and perfect and I love everything about you.”

“You loved Bazine,” she said, seemingly willing to let go of the rest- or maybe reluctant to bring up what happened with Snoke and the bitter memories of people using his body in ways he didn’t enjoy- but stuck on this point.

“I did,” he admitted. “I know it must have been hard for you to hear all of that at the hearing and I’m sorry, but even though I loved her back then it was nothing compared to the way I feel about you.”

She nodded skeptically and he pulled her close to rub his nose against her temple, his voice low and soft as he whispered in her ear. “We don’t have to wait but we don’t have to  _ rush,  _ either. We can go slow and I can show you, prove it to you.”

It hit him again, the glorious feeling of having time to spend. The bed behind them wasn’t going anywhere and neither were they. He could take as much time as he needed to show her that his words were true, that he meant it when he said he’d never loved anyone, never wanted anyone, the way he wanted her.

“Kylo?”

“Hmm?”

“Can you start showing me now?” She pressed against him again, eyes wide and vulnerable like she was afraid he might reject her. He couldn’t do that, no matter what reservations he might have that she was pushing herself to do too much, too quickly, and he resolved to use everything he had ever learned about how to please a partner to make sure that she didn’t regret it.

He leaned down, hooking a hand around the back of each thigh and lifting her until she settled against him, her dress pushed up around her hips and her legs wrapped around his waist.

She gasped and grabbed his shoulders, eyes widening in shocked pleasure that only intensified when he cupped her ass in his hands, thumbs sliding under the edges of the underwear she wore to caress the soft skin beneath.

He turned and walked to the end of the bed with her wrapped around him like a vine, nipping and kissing his way across her jaw as he went. By the time he sat down with her on his lap, her body was already quivering and her lips were parted, her breaths coming in soft pants of confused arousal.

She wanted him, but she was clearly already nearly overwhelmed with the newness of what was happening to her. One hand let go of her ass so he could run his fingernails over her thigh. He wanted to see how she would react if he stimulated her body any further, to see how sensitive she was, how reactive to his touch.

She whimpered and scooted closer, grinding against him hardened beneath her and kissed her neck and then across the shadows of her collar bones before following the curve of her chest down into the dip between her breasts. He pressed a kiss on the skin there before tugging down the bodice of her dress to reveal the lace of her bralette. He cupped a breast, squeezing it and rubbing his thumb over the hardened bud of her nipple.

Her back arched pushing her body into his hand as she shifted her hips restlessly.

“Kylo?” Her voice cracked, fear and desire at odds in her tone.

“It’s okay,” he soothed. “Just hold on to me.”

She tightened her fingers on his shoulders where she gripped him as he changed his hold on her, one finger following the edge of her panties as they rounded the top of her thigh and veered back down toward the apex of her sex. He didn’t dip beneath the fabric, but she was already hot, and the cloth was damp against his knuckle.

Her hips bucked against him instinctively, seeking and searching for more as she tucked her face into the curve of his neck.

“Are you embarrassed?” he asked, rubbing a hand over the curve of her back as she nodded against his shoulder. “You don’t have anything to be embarrassed about. I like it. I fucking love it that you’re all wet for me, baby.”

“You do?” She didn’t lift her head from his shoulder, but her voice was hopeful.

“Yes, you’re doing so good, such a good girl.”

Her whole body shook at his words.

“Do you like that? Being good for me?”

Her only response was another jerky nod against his shoulder, but her hips were slowly shifting, trying to get some friction or relief from the arousal he knew she felt, but unable to do so because she was spread so wide around his torso.

Struck with sudden inspiration, he nudged her right leg over his thigh until it was nestled between his legs, leaving her straddling his left thigh. “This will help,” he told her, letting his hands resume their exploration as he guided her hands from his shoulders to his hips and then tugged the straps of her dress down over her shoulders, revealing new skin and the expanse of her breasts beneath white lace.

“So pretty,” he said, lifting the bra out of the way and then holding her in place while he sucked a bruise onto her breast. She squirmed beneath his lips as he pulled the blood up toward the surface of her skin, and he almost felt guilty when he pulled away and examined the small purple mark that he’d left, but there was a need to claim her that hummed in his veins with a strength that was almost cruel.

She looked down with a crease between her brows, her fingers drifting softly over the bruise. “Is that a hickey?”

“Yes,” he admitted.

“Hmm,” she hummed, noncommittal.

He took her lack of objection to mean she wasn’t angry, and he returned his attention to her chest, his fingers plucking her nipples into pebble harness and then sucking one and the other into his mouth as she gasped and whined. 

She shifted eagerly against his thigh, and he knew the exact moment that she realized the new position allowed her to rub her clit on the hard muscle of his leg because a soft and eager moan tore from her lips.

“Yes,” he whispered, “just like that. Does that feel good?”

She nodded, her breath quickening, and he could feel the wetness soaking through her panties and his jeans to warm the skin of his leg.

“You can come like this,” he told her. “I want you to.”

She stopped moving abruptly, mouth twisting into a frown. “What about you?”

“I’ll be fine,” he said, almost smiling at her petulant expression. “I can always handle it myself later if I need to.”

“Can I watch?”

He jerked his head up. “What?”

She was looking down at the bulge of his cock and it jumped beneath her curious stare. “Can you do it now? So, I can watch?”

“You want to watch me get off?” He was stunned by the eager nod of her head, the dark and greedy desire in her eyes.

“Maybe…” She licked her lips and reached for the button on his jeans. “Maybe if you show me how to do it, I can help.”

“Christ,” he swore, sucking in a deep breath as her fingers brushed against his stomach.

“Did I hurt you?”

“No,” he said, gripping her jaw as he pushed his lips roughly against hers. “You’re fucking perfect. Keep going…please.”

She grinned at him, face flushed and hair tumbling down from her bun where his fingers had dug into it. He pulled her in for another desperate kiss and as soon as he let her go she went back to rocking her hips against his thigh as she pulled his shirt over his head and then worked to get his zipper down and free him from his underwear. He made a mental note to buy something better than the thin white boxers that the prison provided him.

Her breath slipped from her lips on a shuddering exhale when his cock sprang free and jutted up toward his stomach.

“ _ Much _ bigger than I expected,” she murmured, tipping her head to look at him.

“You’ve never seen…” he began, but she shook her head.

“No, never,” she said, reaching for the tip of him with one gentle finger. “It’s wet,” she observed, smearing precum across the head and laughing in surprise when his body jerked at her touch.

“That’s for you,” he explained. “It makes it easier for me to be inside you.”

“Like I get wet for you?”

“Yes,” he agreed, swallowing hard as her fingers continued to explore, following the ridge around the head of his cock before trailing down the sides to discover his pulse in the veins that lined the sides.

“I like the way it feels,” she said. “So hard but the skin is so soft.”

“Rey,” he said, dropping his head to her shoulder. He wasn’t certain if he was begging or praying.

“Show me,” she whispered, the edge of need turning it nearly into a whine. “Please.”

He urged her to lean back and dipped his fingers inside her panties until he could skim through her folds and gather the wetness. She made a soft noise of encouragement as he pushed into her center and then again as he began using the shiny slick he’d found to coat his hand before he started to stroke his hardened length. She watched intently as he showed her how to work his cock, describing the right pressure and the pace that he liked the best as she writhed on his thigh and nodded along to his instructions.

After a few minutes of listening, she reached between her legs without prompting, rocking back to make room for her fingers as she copied what he had done and coated her palm with her own shimmering arousal. Her fingers wrapped hesitantly around his cock just below his own and he let go to put his hand over hers and guide her until her caress became confident.

He pushed up against her hand, watching in awe as the head of his cock appeared and then disappeared between the round grip of her hand with each stroke.

She ground against him harder, her thighs tightening on his and he realized that she was also looking at her hand and watching him thrust into her palm. She liked it, what she was doing to him, and her hips began to move in earnest as she chased her own orgasm.

He grabbed her hip with one and urged her on as she rode his thigh, his other hand coming up to squeeze her breast. His lips found her throat again, tasting the soft flutter of her pulse and the slight tang of her sweat on her skin.

She was breathing harder, hips jerking erratically, and he knew she was getting closer as he leaned down and captured her nipple between his teeth. The sound that she made was nearly a scream, and the hand that wasn’t still working his cock came up to tangle in his hair.

“Come for me,” he commanded. “Baby, please.” He was desperate, his own orgasm creeping up and tightening his balls as she tightened her grip on him.

The words seemed to be all the encouragement that she needed, and she came with a husky shout, her head tossed back and her body convulsing with the strength of her climax.

The sight of her coming apart in his arms was enough to snap his own restraint and he came before he could warn her. He pulled her in close, his teeth sinking into the soft rounded slope of shoulder as milky white come spurted over them both, spilling out over her hand and his stomach in hot waves.

“Sorry,” he mumbled quickly, trying to shift her off of him so he could clean the mess off of her, worried that she’d be disgusted or angry.

“It’s fine,” she said softly, clinging to him as she gathered the fabric of her skirt and used it to wipe them clean, first her hand and then his stomach. She curled against him when she was finished, her lips finding his for a lazy kiss.

“Are you okay?” he asked, rubbing his jaw on her hair and breathing in the floral scent of her shampoo. He’d wanted to go slower, to focus more on her pleasure this first time, but she’d taken him by surprise with her enthusiasm.

“Better than fine,” she said with a giggle. “But I think we’re going to have to wash your jeans before you can wear them shopping tomorrow. I’m going to have to have to put them in the laundry downstairs.”

“I would help you but…”

She giggled again. “I don’t think my neighbors are quite ready for the sight of you naked in the laundry room. You could make dinner, though, while I toss them in.”

He pulled back to look down at her in a panic. “I can’t cook,” he said quickly.

“There’s ramen in the pantry,” she said confidently. “You can boil water, right?”

“Yeah,” he said skeptically. “I think so, if you show me.”

“Alright,” she agreed, kissing the side of his neck before she stood up on legs that were still visibly shaking. “Come on, let’s clean up and then we’ll take care of all that.”

He followed her into the bathroom and then watched as she stripped off her clothes, a blush creeping over her cheeks. The shower was barely big enough to fit them both and the meager water pressure delivered a spray that was mostly cold, but he rubbed the soap into her skin and helped her wash away the slickness between her legs.

“I’m sorry,” he said, running his hands over the marks his teeth had left in her shoulder.

She grinned at him, tapping the bruise he’d sucked into her breast. “Marking your territory?” she asked, a teasing lilt in her voice that made him smile back at her.

“Maybe.”

“Hmm, maybe next time it’ll be my turn.”

He thought that she just might be bold enough to bite him. What she lacked in experience she more than made up for in enthusiasm and instinct. He’d been with women that had much more sophistication, but none that had ever looked at him like she did. Like he was something precious and valuable.

Stains that he’d thought were permanently embedded in his soul seemed to fade away when she looked at him like that.

He wrapped his arms around her, holding her tight in the shower as the cold water poured over them.


	24. I Need You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world- 1 John 2:16.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promise not every chapter from now on will be as smut heavy as this section is, but we are still in the building intimacy phase of the story where they are learning each other and it's important to the solidification of the relationship. I have not abandoned the plot altogether!
> 
> CW // Sexual intimacy, less than perfectly safe sexual practices, mention of past sexual trafficking, mention of past sexual assault, mention of past physical abuse
> 
> If you feel I missed one, please let me know!

Her hands on his body were warm and soft but not familiar.

He sighed and leaned into her touch, his eyes closed as he tried to focus on the sensations and ignore the sick rolling twist of guilt in his stomach. 

He should want this, shouldn’t he? 

Or maybe he shouldn’t, but he did anyway and that’s why guilt was reaching it’s grasping claws up his throat..

He wasn’t sure what the answers were and could barely focus on the questions as her fingers pressed lower, crossing the distance between his chest and his cock with practiced efficiency. Her grip was firm and sure, and he groaned, hips bucking into her.

“Doesn’t that feel good? Don’t overthink it.”

He jerked away, eyes popping open at the voice that he didn’t recognize. Something was wrong, something that he couldn’t quite process as he blinked slowly into eyes that were the color of warm chocolate. Nothing at all like the soft hazel of the woman whose scent still lingered in his mind.

He didn’t want this, and he pushed her hand away, watching with horror as her lips peeled back to show bloodstained teeth.

“You don’t want me to touch you?” she asked. “We’ll see what Snoke thinks about that.”

“No,” he begged, trying to catch hold of her hand as she crawled out of the bed and disappeared, leaving him alone.

He couldn’t be back here, not with Snoke. Where was Rey? How had he ended up here, with some other woman, instead of in her bed where he belonged?

Had she kicked him out? Given him no place to go besides back to this?

“Foolish child,” Snoke said, standing suddenly at the end of the bed and tapping his finger ominously against his lips as Kylo curled into himself in the bed, the sheet his only protection from the other man’s penetrating gaze. “I gave you the easiest of jobs. Fucking beautiful women in expensive hotel rooms is a privilege. If you’ve had your fill of that, you can start sucking dick in dark alleys with the rest of them.”

Kylo opened his mouth to explain, to ask for forgiveness but the hotel room and the soft silk sheets were gone, and nothing was left but the dark dank wetness of Snoke’s basement as the door closed behind him.

These hands weren’t soft and all he could find in the dark was pain.

Even Cardo had heard him screaming, he remembered now. His shame at being raped and beaten not his own private humiliation, after all.

He sat up quickly, his breath coming hard and fast as his heart raced in his chest. His senses were still lost in the nightmare, the smell of mold clinging to his nose like he’d been carried out of that basement mere seconds ago and erasing the decade since.

Desperate to clear his mind, he reached- as he always did when the nightmares came for him- for the grounding familiarity of his surroundings. The hard cot beneath him, the steady drip of the sink, the stink of sweat and ammonia, all usually brought the cold wave of reality to clear away the conjurings of his sleeping mind.

He found none of those things.

Instead, there was the soft dip of a mattress, the steady tick of a bedside clock, and the scent of her. She was curled on her side beside him, face soft and relaxed as she slept and one hand resting on the pillow beside her face.

The clock beside the bed read 3:35 when he slipped quietly from the bed and left her alone.

***

She found him in the kitchen, standing in the dim green light of her microwave wearing nothing but the thin white underwear the prison had issued him. 

“Kylo?”

He jumped, startled to hear her voice coming out of the darkness of the hallway.

She crept closer, snaking a hand around his wrist when he didn’t answer. “It’s four in the morning, what are you doing out here?”

“Can’t sleep,” he muttered. “It’s lights on at 3:30 in prison. I’ve been waking up this early for thirteen years.”

“Oh,” she said, sleep clogging her mind as she pressed into his side, seeking the warmth he’d taken with him when he’d left his side of the bed empty. “Why didn’t you wake me?”

“I…” He sighed and rubbed his jaw against her hair. “I didn’t want to disturb you. You looked so peaceful.”

“Kylo, what’s wrong?” She pulled back to look at him, frowning when he wouldn’t meet her eyes. “Are you cold? You’re shaking.”

He shook his head, hands tightening on her hips to keep her from moving away when she tried to go and fetch a blanket from the bedroom.

“Just a bad dream,” he said. “It happens sometimes.”

“What were you dreaming about?” she asked, leaning back into him and offering him her body heat anyway as she wrapped her arms around his torso.

“It’s nothing…”

“It’s something,” she insisted. “You can always tell me anything. I want to help you.”

“I know you do,” he said, kissing the top of her head. “But there’s nothing we can do about it.”

She wanted to argue, to tell him that it was normal for him to be feeling unsettled after having to relive everything for the hearing and enduring all the changes he’d experienced in such a short time, but he tipped her chin up with the curve of his finger and silenced her with his lips on hers.

This kiss was nothing like the ones before, none of the softness and the sweetness that she’d gotten from him yesterday. His mouth was hot on hers, demanding as he parted her lips with his tongue and ravaged the soft recess within.

If his earlier touches had been mostly for her, to show her his love and desire, this was purely about him and whatever memories had haunted his nightmares. He clutched her to him as though her skin on his was the cure for a lifetime of pain, his hands tugging up the hem of the nightgown that barely skimmed her knees until he could reach beneath and cup the backs of her thighs.

She gasped when he lifted her, knocking aside the clutter from last night’s dinner where it rested on the kitchen counter. Something clattered into the sink and porcelain shattered as one of her bowls hit the floor and exploded on impact.

“Kylo,” she protested, worried about the shards and his bare feet, but he stepped into the empty waiting space between her thighs and nipped her neck with the edges of his teeth until she shuddered beneath the onslaught of his mouth.

“Buy you a new one,” he mumbled against her skin, unheeding to any damage he might be doing to himself. “I just need you, need to taste you.”

He pressed a knuckle to the core of her, the pressure of his hand a new sensation against the fabric of the underwear. She spread her knees, eagerness and nerves tightening her muscles as she perched at the edge of kitchen countertop and wondered wildly if they were really going to do this _here_ and _right now,_ caught up in some whirlwind frenzy of need with sleep still clinging stubbornly to her mind and inescapable memories still hanging heavily on his.

It was there on the tip of tongue to say no, to ask him if they could wait for a soft bed and passion that wasn’t driven by whatever demons dogged his dreams, but he leaned his forehead against hers, his voice soft and desperate and hands gripping her thighs like a lifeline.

“Please,” he whispered, and she heard the need there, the aching echoes of pain that she wanted to soothe.

She nodded, her head moving jerkily against his as he sighed his relief and curled his fingers into the band of her underwear. She shifted as he pulled, lifting her legs one at time so that he could guide them roughly over her thighs and down her calves to toss them aside.

There was no patience here, no gentle path traveled over the slim column of her neck or the soft peak of her breast. He looked at her like he wanted to drown in her, to wash away whatever ghosts still haunted him in the wet pool of her cunt.

Her hips jerked when he pressed a hand to the center of her, her fingers beginning an exploration of her body that made her writhe and drip onto the cheap laminate countertop. She clung to him, one hand tangled in his hair and her face pressed into the curve of his shoulder, as he circled the bud of her clit until she was biting down on the soft skin of his neck to muffle her whimpers.

“Lean back, baby,” he instructed softly, moving his hands to her legs and smearing her own slick wetness on the skin there as he pressed his thumbs gently into the tender flesh of her inner thighs, urging her to spread them wider.

She hesitated, mind hazy with pleasure as she stared up at him with parted lips and panting breath.

“ _Rey_ ,” he said, deep and commanding, “lean back.”

Fresh wetness rushed between her thighs at the low rumble of his voice. She’d never been able to ignore that tone, not since the first time she’d heard him speak and he’d left her whimpering on the phone just from the sound of her name on his lips.

She reached behind her and leaned back into her palms, reclining enough that he could jerk her hips forward and bring the curve of her ass right up the edge of the counter, her cunt open and bared to his gaze when he nudged her legs even further apart so that he could look down at her with knowing and hungry eyes.

She shivered when he trailed one finger through the folds of her body, but this time he didn’t settle on her clit but reached further into the hidden and unexplored depths until he could press persistently against the entrance of her body.

The sudden realization that she felt acutely empty settled over her, and she pushed her hip forward, seeking more as he gently rocked the tip of finger inside her. She clenched down on the intrusion, chasing the unfamiliar sensation of being stroked from within.

“Do you like that?” he asked, his face serious in the odd green light.

“Yes,” she admitted, cheeks flaming at being asked to say it out loud but pleased when he grunted in satisfaction and worked his finger deeper inside of her in response.

She squirmed against his hand, seeking more as he curved his finger, pressing against her in new angles that helped her discover the potential of her own body and the places within that sent shockwaves of new feelings shooting through her.

His fingers were able to reach places inside her that her own were not and the difference in length and width was enough to make her head spin, especially when he added a second finger beside the first. There was pressure now, a stretch that let her know how full he had made her and how delightful it was that she was made to open and accept him, her body bending to allow him in.

It would do the same with other parts of him, much longer and thicker than his fingers, and she arched her hips shamelessly into his hand as he stroked her, eager to take what he was giving her and more.

Her doubts faded beneath the caress of his fingers, the odd light and the hard edge of the countertop as it dug into her thighs suddenly seemingly like the perfect accompaniments to this life changing experience.

“You need more,” he said, more answer than question, and she blinked down at him, ready to remind him of the condoms that she’d stored uncertainly in her bedside drawer, but he pulled her up to give her a quick kiss and then dropped to his knees in front of her.

She peered down at him curiously, trying to draw her knees together now that his height had been diminished just enough to bring him to face level with her bared and glistening core.

“Shh,” he soothed, pressing a line of kisses up her thigh. “I just need to taste you, remember?”

“You’re not going to…I mean… _you know_?”

“Fuck you? Not right now,” he said with a soft chuckle, looking up to meet her eyes as he leaned in to skin his lips over the lips of her cunt. His face came away wet and her cheeks burned with embarrassment, but he never looked away from her, his eyes still hot and locked onto her face. 

She bit down on her lip as he parted her folds with his tongue, a long soft swipe that ended with a focused suck on her clit that made her whimper as she tossed back her head and lost herself in the motions of his mouth.

She understood now why such things were meant to be sinful- how could she keep her mind focused on the kingdom of heaven when Kylo was able to bring heaven to her on earth?

He feasted on her like a starving man suddenly invited to the king’s table, exploring each shadowed bit of flesh and gathering up all the wetness he found there before startling her by plunging his tongue inside her.

The sound she made was nearly a scream and something she knew she’d hear about later from her neighbors on the other side of the thin apartment walls, but she was beyond caring about anything but the heat of his mouth and the silken slide of his tongue.

When he replaced his tongue with his fingers inside her, filling her and stroking the spot that he’s already discovered made her moan as he returned his attention to the sensitive bud of her clit, she came apart beneath him. He held his mouth to her, gently guiding her through the aftershocks, as she coated his fingers with a fresh wave of wetness.

“God, you look so beautiful,” he told her, “when you come on my fingers.”

She was still splayed across the kitchen counter, chest heaving and breasts bouncing as she tried to catch her breath. “What about you? Do you…do you want me to do that to you?”

“Do you want to?”

She sat up, pushing the hem of her nightgown down around her thighs. “I think so. I should want to, after all that. Don’t you think so?”

He shook his head and pressed a kiss to her knee before standing up. “That’s not how it works, baby. It’s okay if you’re not ready for that.”

She hooked a finger into the waistband of his underwear, pulling him toward her as she reached down to rub a finger up the length of his cock in her hand through the fabric. “I want to do _something_ ,” she insisted. “We could, I mean, _you_ could…” She spread her knees invitingly, unable to say the words but determined to issue the invitation.

“Not like this,” he said, gripping her jaw and pressing a hard kiss to her mouth. “We can do something else.”

“What else is there?” she asked, her mouth turning down in a pout.

He smiled and lifted her down, patting her hip once her feet were on the floor again. “Turn around,” he instructed, waiting till she shot him a puzzled look and turned to face the counter to lift her nightgown back up around her hips.

Her thighs were still wet with all of the slick arousal that had dripped from her and when he pressed them together and she felt the press of his cock at the seam between them she understood what he was trying to do. “Oh,” she breathed softly, leaning forward until she could rest her elbows on the counter and pushing her backside toward him.

He was nestled in the space he’d created between her legs, thrusting softly against her, sliding back and forth on the old wet and the new that she was creating as she watched him appear and disappear between her thighs.

It wasn’t the same as his fingers inside her, but he was pressed against her, his chest hot where it met her back breath ragged and desperate in her ear, and she would have lost herself in the moment forever if she had been given the option. 

He had one arm wrapped around her body, clamped to her stomach like an iron band, as his other hand gripped the countertop beside her elbow, holding them both steady against the motion of his hips.

“Rub your clit,” he told her huskily. “Just like you used to do for me in all the letters you wrote when you told me what it was like to touch yourself. Do it now, let me feel you come for me while you tell me what it feels like.”

Heat rushed through her and she clenched down on nothing as she fumbled with the fabric of her nightgown, tugging it out of the way until she could press her fingers to the still sensitive area between her legs. Her thighs jumped and tensed around him at the first stroke of her hands and he swore softly.

“Sorry,” she mumbled.

“Don’t you dare apologize,” he growled. “You’re fucking perfect.”

“Kylo,” she whined, and he jerked her back against him, bouncing her off his chest and his hips.

“Talk to me,” he begged. “Please, baby.”

“Yes,” she agreed, her fingers rubbing in earnest now and her thighs shaking around him. “It feels good, _so good_ when I touch myself.”

“Yeah?” he grunted. “Tell me what you wanted when I was in prison.”

“You,” she said, breathless as she hurtled rapidly toward another orgasm. “I wanted you to touch me.”

“Why?”

“Because I love you,” she said. “Because I want you and I need you and I know it will feel even better when it’s your hands on my clit.”

He let go of the counter and pushed her hand aside, replacing her fingers with his own. “Like this? Is this what you wanted, Rey?”

She leaned into the counter, her body tense and poised the edge. “Please,” she begged. “Please let me come.”

“Say it,” he demanded, the movements of his fingers slowing just enough to make her whine in protest. “Tell me this is what you wanted, that it’s better when I touch you.”

“It’s better,” she panted. “So much better. Kylo, _please_.”

He sped up, his fingers pressing into her just the way she liked until it ripped a second orgasm from her. Her mouth opened on a wordless cry as she clamped her thighs together, whole body shuddering with the strength of the pleasure that tore through her.

He pushed into her thighs, whispering words that she caught only the edges of. Things like “ _so pretty”_ and _“good girl”_ and then “ _oh fuck”_ as he pulled her hard against him and coated the insides of her thighs with hot come.

She leaned into the counter, him resting against her back and his spend cooling on her thighs as she tried to catch her breath. “Well, that was…”

“Perfect?” he asked, pressing a kiss to the back of her neck, just beneath hair that curled, damp with sweat, against her skin.

“Yeah,” she said with a giggle, head pressed to the cold smooth surface of the countertop. “Perfect.”

“Rey?”

“Hmm?”

“I really fucking love you.”

“I really fucking love you, too,” she said with a sigh. “But you broke my bowl.”

“Shit.”

He stood up and let go of her, so she was able to turn around and flick on the overhead kitchen light and survey the damage. It was indeed broken, but mostly in large pieces that would be easy to pick up and avoid stepping on.

“I’ll pick this up while you wash off,” he said to her, kissing her quickly on the nose before crouching down to grab the first few shards of broken porcelain.

The come was already drying and sticky on her skin when she stepped into the shower and it was bothersome enough that she was grateful for even the cold stingy spray. Still, she didn’t linger, and it was only a few minutes before she was rushing into the bedroom to tug on a clean pair of shorts and a soft t-shirt.

He was digging in the pantry when she came back, and she realized he was probably used to eating breakfast this early, too.

“If we keep this up, we’re going to spend a lot of time showering,” she said with a laugh, her thighs still shaking as she leaned into his side and pushed the hair back and away from his eyes. Whatever sadness had been there earlier had vanished, leaving nothing but warmth as he leaned into her palm. “Go ahead and hop in and I’ll whip up something to eat for breakfast. Pancakes or omelettes?”

“Umm,” he stammered, suddenly unsure, and she remembered his frozen silence in the fast-food drive through, staring at the menu full of options like a deer in the headlights of an oncoming truck.

“I’m usually fonder of pancakes,” she added helpfully. “Especially for special occasions.”

“What’s the special occasion?” he asked, pausing on his way to the bathroom to look at her curiously.

“You are,” she said, unable to resist the urge to stretch up on her tiptoes and press another kiss to the warm plush curve of his mouth. Soon enough he’d taste like sugar and syrup but for now he only tasted like Kylo and the tang of her own arousal. Her body clenched on a newly learned greed, but she knew he needed time and they had to go shopping today. He was already going to have to wear the same outfit as yesterday, albeit newly washed.

“But am I pancake worthy?” he asked, lifting one brow at her skeptically.

She bit her lip, pretending to think it over, before looking back at the kitchen countertop, still wet and shiny where he’d cleaned it while she showered.

“Definitely.”

The tips of his ears were pink when he left the kitchen.

She mixed ingredients and pulled out a pan, setting it on the stove to heat as she hurried back to the bedroom to check her phone.

She had expected the texts from her father, asking if she was alright and requesting that she check in again this morning, but she frowned at the numerous texts that were waiting for her. From her father, from Rose and Finn, Kaydel, even Jannah all the way in Colorado.

She walked to a living room in a daze, pancakes forgotten, and picking up the remote to turn the TV on to the first news channel she came across. Trial footage from thirteen years ago filled the screen- a young Kylo stoic and empty eyed as he faced down the jury.

The news anchor was talking fast, and she wasn’t able to hear him over the dull buzzing in her ears. The headline beneath the images, however, was inescapable.

_Teenage Murderer Freed After Only Thirteen Years in Stunning Court Decision_

She dimly registered the sudden absence of sound in the apartment and realized that Kylo had turned the water off in the shower. She hit the button remote as quickly as possible to turn the TV off, tossing it back on the couch as the screen went dark.

She was in the kitchen pouring batter into a pan when he came back, one towel slung low across his hips and using another to dry his dark curls.

“Smells good,” he said, pulling her back into his chest and nuzzling his face into her neck.

“No funny business until after breakfast and shopping,” she declared, flipping the pancake and turning to kiss cheek. “We should head out pretty soon, before the stores get crowded.”


	25. Like Hell

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wrath is cruel, anger is overwhelming, but who can stand before jealousy? Proverbs- 27:4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Valentine's Day! As my little gift to all of you, I am updating two chapters of this today. It was one chapter that got way too long but instead of just cutting it and moving the rest into a future update I fleshed it out to two standard length chapters and decided to post them both today. 
> 
> CW // self doubt and a hint of jealousy
> 
> As always, if you feel that I've missed a tag please let me know.

Shopping with Rey was both easier and much harder than Kylo had imagined that it would be. Following around the aisles of the nearest Target as she tossed clothes in a red shopping cart held none of the stuffiness that he remembered from his days of being dragged from one fancy boutique to another by his mother, and none of the rush that had come with dashing out the doors with whatever stolen item had caught his attention as he done during his days with Knights of Ren.

He was grateful for the normalcy of it—for the bright florescent lighting and the shopping cart’s squeaky wheel and the underwear that she held up for his inspection before shrugging and adding it to the top of the pile—but somewhere between socks and t-shirts he began to notice the looks.

First the odd glance over someone’s shoulder and then mother’s tugging their toddlers away from him as they entered the aisles or simply turning around and leaving altogether, the next item on their lists forgotten entirely in their rush to get away.

“Does it all have to be black?” Rey asked, peeking at him from over the top of a black hoodie that she swore he’d need when it started to cool off in the fall.

“Yes,” he said, barely glancing her way before frowning at the old man that scowled at him over a rack of men’s jackets. He glanced down at the white shirt he was wearing, checking for the third time to make sure that the prison hadn’t stamped the word “felon” on the front without him noticing.

The fabric remained stubbornly blank.

“Why does everyone keep staring at me?” he asked, running a frustrated hand through his hair and turning his back on the old man. “Do I have something on my face or what?”

She bit her bottom lip and shrugged. “Impressed by your incredible good looks?”

“Rey,” he said, folding his arms across his chest and raising one eyebrow.

“Fine,” she said, her mood turning sour as she glared back at the old man, her expression so ferocious that he finally huffed and disappeared into the nearby electronics section. “The news  _ may _ have done a few stories on your release.”

He uncrossed his arms and glanced over his shoulder. There were far more people subtly eyeing him than he’d realized. “A few?”

“A lot,” she admitted. “It started out local, but it’s been picked up by the national news stations now.”

“Didn’t they get enough sensationalist bullshit when they locked me up?” he grumbled. “It’s been thirteen goddamn years.”

“Amilyn warned me that it might happen after the reporters showed up at the hearing. It was a high-profile case back then and you  _ are _ still a senator’s son,” she reminded him. “It ignited a national debate on the Supreme Court’s ruling and victim’s advocate’s groups are furious that your case might set a precedent for more lenient sentences for minor defendants in the future.”

“Jesus,” he said, grabbing the cart and steering it toward the front as she trotted along behind him, trying to keep up with his longer strides. “We’re getting out of here before someone decides to spit on you for being with me or something and they have to put me back in prison for kicking their ass.”

“Hey,” she said, grabbing the back of his shirt and planting her feet until he was forced to stop. She waited for him to turn back around and shook her head firmly. “Don’t even joke about that. You’re not going back there. Do you hear me?”

Her eyes were bright and hard, the softness of her face gone as her brow creased and her mouth thinned into a line that was uncrossable. She was, for all her sweetness, an unshakeable force of will.

“I know,” he soothed. “I’m sorry.”

She sighed, her body relaxing as people turned to watch, squinting at him skeptically and waiting to see if he’d move to hurt her in the middle of the store at 9 am on a weekday morning. More than half of them looked like they expected her to be the first of a new line of victims, the continuation of a pattern that he’d started all those years ago with his father.

“Let’s go,” she urged, taking back control of the cart and leading him toward the checkout line. “We didn’t get everything you’ll need but we got enough for now and we’ll order the rest online. If you’re uncomfortable being out then we’ll just stay in for a while, wait till it all blows over.”

“What if it doesn’t?”

“It will,” she said. “Something new will come along and it’ll push you out of the news completely.”

“I hope so,” he said, but he hated the way that everyone’s eyes lingered on them as they walked and the cashier’s suspicious gaze as Rey loaded everything from the basket onto the little conveyor belt and attempted to make small talk.

They were all watching him, but doing so meant they were also watching  _ her,  _ too…invading her privacy and giving pitying little shakes of their heads as they whispered behind their hands.

And he wondered, for the first time  _ really _ wondered, about what their relationship looked like to the rest of the world. He’d wondered about how it would affect Rey and how it was perceived by people who knew her and cared about her, but he’d never given a shit about anyone else.

But the people he had worried about were people that knew Rey. They knew how stubborn she was and how passionate, and they’d seen her and how happy she was, how loved.

These people, the rest of the world, didn’t know Rey and all they saw was a young woman barely on the other side of adulthood that had been sucked into the life of man a decade older than she was. A murderer. A manipulator. Someone who was taking advantage of her youth and inexperience. He wouldn’t have to hurt her for her to be a victim in their eyes. His presence in her life was enough.

He shifted uncomfortably under the accusatory look of the cashier, his mind flooded with images of Rey’s early morning kitchen and the sounds she’d made when he’s driven her over the edge into her orgasm, her thighs clamped around his cock before she’d even had a chance to clear the sleep from her eyes.

She was a fucking  _ virgin _ for Christ’s sake, and he’d been on her like an animal, lost in the memories of his disgusting past life. He’d sank back into the filth in his nightmares and then he’d taken her down with him.

Her cheeks were pink but her face was defiant as she slipped her bank card into the machine and paid for his socks and new pants, the bathing suit trunks she’d said he was going to need for this afternoon when she took him swimming. He’d have money of his own as soon as he talked to Amilyn and found out how to access his trust fund, but what if he hadn’t been a silver spoon fed trust fund baby?

No one knew about that, they all just saw her dropping money she’d worked for to feed him, clothe him. Like he was a fucking parasite on her and her life. Living in the apartment she paid for, riding around in the car she was making the payments on. He didn’t even have a fucking driver’s license, couldn’t do a damn thing on his own right now.

He stuffed his hands in his pockets and said nothing else as they walked to the car.

“You’re brooding,” she said, closing the trunk of the car after they’d tossed all his stuff in.

He rolled a shoulder, not bothering to deny it. “I don’t like the way they were looking at you or the things they were thinking.”

“You don’t know what they were thinking.”

“They were wondering if I was going to hurt you,” he insisted. “They were thinking that I’m a murderer and that I’m a monster who’s taking advantage of you because you’re young and…”

“And that’s bullshit,” she said, puffing up in irritation. “What now all of a sudden you think I’m too young for you?”

“I think I haven’t let you experience anything else,” he said carefully. “You’re a virgin and look what I did to you this morning…”

“I  _ liked _ what you did to me this morning,” she said angrily, poking him in the chest with her finger. “I tried dating someone else and I didn’t like it, but if you’d rather that I got some  _ experience _ with someone else first…”

“Like hell,” he snapped. Rational thought and selfless impulses aside, the idea of her being with someone else was enough to have jealousy clawing painfully at his insides. Fuck that, maybe he didn’t deserve her after everything and maybe she would have been better off with someone else, but it was too late for that now.

“That’s what I thought,” she said quietly. “I don’t want someone else and I don’t want you to be with someone else, either. I don’t give a shit about what anyone else thinks or about what happened before.  _ It’s just us now _ .”

She crowded into him, pushing into his personal space and resolutely ignoring it as the occasional passerby slowed down to stare at them. She leaned into his chest and pressed up on her toes, curling her arms around his neck and tugging him down until he surrendered and caught her mouth with his.

Her mouth was sweet and she parted her lips for him without coaxing, heedless of the eyes that watched them or the judgement of those who stared as she teased him with her tongue and tangled her fingers in his hair.

She kissed him senseless and then pulled away to place one last peck of her lips to the tip of his nose and smirk up at him in satisfaction.

“I don’t what I could ever have done to deserve you,” he said, awed as always by the sheer vibrancy of her, the light that she carried with her into every situation.

“You were just you,” she said, “and that was always enough. Let’s go home, okay?”

He nodded and gave her another quick kiss before letting her go. “Okay, baby, let’s go home.”

He didn’t say anything else until they were settled into the car and the radio was softly playing a song he’d never heard before just loud enough to be heard over the continuous blast of the air conditioner.

“I wanted to take you on a date,” he said, squeezing her hand where it rested in his on the center console. “But with the way things went at the store…And I haven’t even tried to call Amilyn yet to get access to my trust fund. I need money for us, a driver’s license. I want to take care of you.”

She squeezed back, her smile bright and unconcerned. “You will take care of me, and I’ll take care of you. Things will settle down soon and then we’ll work on getting you a license. Maybe next week if you feel comfortable? In the meantime, you can work on other things. We’ll call Amilyn’s office this afternoon before we go swimming and tonight we can order take out.”

“Swimming and take-out isn’t a date,” he argued. “I wanted to do something special for you.”

She shook her head. “We’ve got the rest of our lives for fancy dinners, Kylo. We can go if you want but it’ll be the same thing that happened at the store. I’m perfectly happy with a movie at home and couch cuddling. That’s the kind of thing I imagined doing with you if you ever got out, not eating expensive food with too much silverware.”

He thought back over the number of dinners Leia had made him attend, crammed into a stuffy suit and shoes that pinched his feet as he listened to boring conversations that he’d have done anything not to be a part of.

It didn’t compare in the slightest to the image of relaxing on Rey’s couch with her head in his lap as they watched whatever movie she’d picked out for them on her TV and he played with the ends of her hair.

“Fine,” he said. “You win. We’ll stay in and order food.”

“I always win,” she said brightly. “I’m very stubborn.”

“Yes, you are,” he agreed. “Lucky for you I like stubborn brunettes with a pretty smile.”

She grinned at him and he lifted her hand to his mouth, pressing a quick kiss to the backs of her knuckles. The soft smell of her perfume lingered in the air and her skin was soft under his fingers. Being able to touch her whenever he wanted to felt like some kind of miracle, the kind of thing that made even someone as jaded and cynical as him wonder if perhaps there might be a God after all. Or at least the beginnings of a run of good fortune that he’d be a fool to turn his back on.

It was a feeling that he carried with him through the rest of the day. 

His own incredible good luck.

It hit him as he watched her make them sandwiches for lunch, stacking slices of meat on bread as he stood beside her in the kitchen filling their plates with chips and slices of watermelon.

And again, when they snuck down to the pool before kids got out of school for the day, when the cold blue water was still empty of everyone except the two of them. Swimming was a pleasure he thought he’d never get to experience again, and they splashed each other like two teens just learning how to flirt before coming up to breathe locked around each other, their mouths hot and hungry.

She tasted of summertime, of sweat and chlorine and sunscreen with the highest SPF that they’d been able to find. Water ran in rivulets down the slim column of her throat and he chased them with his lips, making her shiver with anticipation before he tossed her back toward the deep end and laughed at her indignant squeal.

When he bought her a house, he was going to make sure it had a pool.

By the time they’d made it back upstairs and changed, he’d forgotten the world outside their little bubble of tranquility. The thoughts that had plagued him in the store earlier seemed like nothing more than a bad dream, a brief lapse of judgement on his part.

All that mattered was her and the love he felt for her and he was sure that there was nothing outside of them that could tarnish it. 


	26. Don't You Dare

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A tranquil heart is life to the body,  
> But passion is rottenness to the bones- Proverbs 14:30

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Valentine's Day! As my little gift to all of you, I am updating two chapters of this today. It was one chapter that got way too long but instead of just cutting it and moving the rest into a future update I fleshed it out to two standard length chapters and decided to post them both today. If you've gotten here without reading chapter 25 and seeing the results of Rey and Kylo's shopping trip then you've gone too far and need to go back!
> 
> CW // Explicit sexual content, loss of virginity

Rey was doing everything she could think of to make their evening together feel like a real date.

She’d put on heels and a pretty dress—a little red thing with long sleeves that clung gently to her curves and barely skimmed the skin above her knees—and curled her hair. She’d used a heavier hand with her makeup, the normally natural looking hues replaced by a soft smokey eye and a bright red lip.

He was wearing the clothes she’d asked him to change into—a pair of dark slacks that she’d bought him and a black button-down shirt that he’d rolled the sleeves up on—as he curled his toes inside a pair of his new socks. His feet were still bare because they’d forgotten to buy him new shoes at the store but she only giggled at that as he helped her light the candles that she’d scattered around the apartment.

In the end it felt nice, cozy, and he was glad that she’d talked him into staying in for the night.

The apartment smelled of the takeout Chinese food in an assortment of plastic containers that lined her coffee table as she smoothed his collar and pressed a kiss to his cheek, soft and careful so as not to smudge her lipstick.

“Ready for our first date?” she asked, giving him a nervous look. Her heels made her taller, but she was still peeking up at him from under her lashes.

“I’ve been ready,” he assured her. “Ever since I figured out that you weren’t old enough to be my grandma.”

“What?”

“The first letter you sent me,” he explained. “I pictured you as a little old lady with white hair.”

She grinned up at him. “I might have still been interested, you know? You could have had yourself a beautiful older woman.”

“I might have still taken you up on that offer,” he said. “You’ll be perfect when you’re eighty. I can just picture you with wrinkles and big glasses.”

“Remind me to keep an eye on you around Mrs. Kanata,” she said, a teasing twinkle in her eye.

“Mrs. Kanata?”

“From the Bible group? I’m pretty sure I told you about her, but anyway I’m sure you’ll meet her at her church and she’s adorable. She’s got to be at least ninety but still a handful.”

He mumbled something incomprehensible under his breath, but she wasn’t paying much attention to him anymore anyway as she sat down on the couch and started digging through the takeout containers.

Did she really expect him to go to church with her? He knew her faith was important to her, but they hadn’t discussed the possibility of him going with her and he knew he wouldn’t feel comfortable being in that environment, not after everything that he’d been through. He’d really believed that she understood that, but suddenly he wasn’t so sure.

They’d have to talk about it, eventually, but he didn’t want to do it now. Not when they were still adjusting and so happy to even be together at all, not when they had so much else to worry about.

It was their first date, and he didn’t want to do anything to take the smile off her face.

He was grateful that she let the subject drop, content to curl against him and eat her dinner as a romcom played on the TV screen. He didn’t recognize the movie or the actors, but he hadn’t watched much TV in prison, so it didn’t surprise him. He wasn’t really watching it now either, he was too busy trying to watch her face and memorize the sound of her laughter and the way the skin at her eyes crinkled when she laughed.

She snuggled in closer to him when the couple on screen kissed for the first time, her hand curving over his knee, and he pressed a quick kiss to her temple, encouraging her hesitant exploration by trailing the tips of his fingers down her arm and back up again across skin that had raised goosebumps in anticipation, as though reaching up to find more of his touch.

His fingers roamed over her as she watched—caressing her jaw, outlining her throat, skimming along the upper edge of her bodice where the tops of her breasts were only just visible. She was trembling, her breathing shallow and heart pounding so hard that he could feel the flutter of it in the thin skin of her wrist.

As soon as the movie was over, she sat up and reached for the remote, clicking the TV and turning to look at him over her shoulder as she got to her feet.

“Ready for bed?” she asked, her voice full of promise and suggestion.

He grinned at her before getting to his feet and pursuing her down the hallway as she danced playfully just out of his reach. He’d barely cleared the doorway to the bedroom when she stopped running and launched herself into his arms, her mouth already seeking his and her arms locking around his neck.

He was tender as he stripped her down, his mouth barely leaving hers as his fingers worked her zipper down to leave her in nothing but scraps of black lace and her heels.

When he finally pulled his head away, he loved the way her red lipstick looked, the color on her mouth mussed by his kiss, so he smeared it with his thumb, pulling her lip down to reveal her perfect white teeth and drawing a line of crimson down her chin.

He’d always wanted to mess her up, just a little, to know that her sweetness and her goodness was something that she’d be willing to set aside just for him. Maybe that did make him a monster, but she sucked his thumb greedily into her mouth and he knew that if it did, she was a little bit of a monster, too.

Her tongue curled around his thumb, soft and wet as she met his eyes with determined intensity. She wasn’t shy or uncertain this time and he reached his other hand up to cup her jaw.

“Are you…”

“Don’t you dare,” she said, removing his thumb from her mouth and pressing a hard kiss to the palm of his hand. “Don’t you dare ask me if I’m sure.”

“I don’t want you to regret being with me,” he said honestly, swallowing hard on the fear that he’d been trying so hard to ignore. “I’m going to do every single thing that I ever told you I would, I’m going to fuck you until you can’t breathe, and you forget your own name. But you have to be sure.”

“I’m sure,” she said, her voice breathy and trembling. “I want you… _ please _ .”

She didn’t wait for an answer, her fingers working quickly over the buttons of his shirt and then gliding over his chest, her touch still featherlight and uncertain as she pushed the material off his shoulders to leave him bare to her gaze.

Her heels gave her enough height to press her mouth against his throat, her lips finding the erratic beat of his pulse and smiling against his skin.

“Kylo?”

“Hmm?”

“How do you…” She trailed off, her fingers finding the purple of the bruise he’d sucked into her skin.

“Ah,” he said. “Just close your mouth on a piece of skin and suck slowly.”

She frowned after her first attempt, the pressure too slight and too short to get the results she wanted, but she beamed up at him after the second try, running her finger proudly over the little ache she’d left behind.

“Happy?” he asked her, and she nodded.

“Mine,” she said simply, repeating his own declaration back to him.

“Yours,” he agreed. “Always.”

She faltered then, her determination suddenly wavering as she realized she didn’t know what to do next.

He felt the burden of responsibility settle over him, as she bit her lip and looked up at him with pleading eyes. He wanted to make it good for her, to be sure that she wouldn’t ever regret what they were about to do. There were enough bad memories haunting their bed already and he was determined that she would never be the one with nightmares disturbing her sleep.

“Please,” she said again. “I’m sure, Kylo, show me what to do.”

She was so eager to please and he was lost in her—in her eyes and in the sweetness of her smell and in the slight wobble of vulnerability in her voice. He wanted to drink it all down, get drunk on her and never recover.

He scooped her up, his arms snaking around her, one around her back and the other hooking under her knees to lift her up in his grasp. He carried her to her bed like a bride across the threshold, except instead of a bridal gown she was wearing almost nonexistent black lace and four-inch heels.

Someday he’d do this into the home they made together. Someday he’d give her his last name and then carry her in his arms in a glittering white dress and lace veil. That day would be perfect, but right now, with her skin bare for him and artlessly smeared red lipstick staining her mouth, she was a vision that he knew he’d never forget.

He laid her on the bed, her body settling against the innocent blue and yellow roses of her bedspread. His hands were shaking as he slid the shoes from her feet and let them drop to the floor beside the bed, and she was watching him, those sharp hazel eyes dark and wide with desire.

She let her knees fall open, an invitation that he desperately wanted to take, but he wanted her to be ready, wanted to pull as much pleasure from her slender body as she could stand and leave her sated and drained.

“Not yet,” he murmured, pressing a kiss to her knee and nuzzling his face into her thigh.

“You keep saying that,” she protested.

“Almost,” he soothed. “I promise. I just need you to be ready for me.”

“I am ready,” she whined, shifting her hips toward him insistently.

“ _ Rey _ ,” he said, using the deep and firm tone that he knew she liked and waiting for her to be still before he spoke again. She needed to understand that he wanted to take things slowly and savor each inch of her skin.

“Your body isn’t ready,” he said when her hips had stopped wiggling, and he dropped a kiss to the lace covered mound where heat and wetness were already waiting for him. “But I’ll fix that, and I’ll make you like it.”

He ran his finger down the lace edge of her underwear and her breath hitched in anticipation. He skimmed them down and over her thighs, tugging them off as tossing them over his shoulder before turning his face back to worship her cunt, his mouth settling over her greedily.

He used his lips and his tongue to ring the first orgasm out of her, barely giving her time to come down before plunging his fingers into her, working her back into a frenzy as he stretched her out, preparing her to take the rest of him until she was desperate and he clinging to his own self-control.

“Condoms?”

It was the last coherent thought he was capable of making as he settled himself between her thighs, the slick wet heat of her body so tantalizingly close, but he knew it mattered. She wasn’t on birth control yet and he was not going to ruin her, not going to risk it no matter much he wanted to feel his bare skin slide against her cunt’s velvet grip.

Besides, it would probably help him last longer, anyway, and he didn’t want to disappoint her by ending things too soon. He was already teetering on the edge, his cock straining and leaking precome against the skin of her thigh.

A condom would help.

She tapped the drawer in the nightstand, and he leaned over to open it, propping himself up one elbow to peer down inside. The soft rumble of his laughter made her frown up at him and he kissed her forehead, unable to do anything else between the endless chuckles and the wave of love he felt for her.

She’d bought boxes of so many different sizes, colors, and flavors that the whole drawer was stacked full of them.Her skin was flushed pink all the way to the tops of her breasts, her face hot with embarrassment. “I didn’t know what kind to get.”

“You are perfect,” he told her, raining kisses across her face and then lingering over her mouth, nibbling softly on her swollen bottom lip. “You try so hard to always get everything right.”

“I wanted you,” she countered hotly. “I wasn’t going to risk not being able to do this because I bought the wrong one, so I bought one of each.”

“That poor cashier,” he said, his forehead resting on hers as he kissed her nose.

“Self-checkout,” she said primly.

“Right,” he said, shaking his head and kissing her again, hard and possessive, before digging back into the drawer to find something usable. He discarded the strawberry flavored and a box that looked as though its contents were meant to glow in the dark before finding the right thing.

He tore it open, the gold packaging fluttering down to land on the floor as he rolled the condom on. She watched him carefully, studying his motions, and he suspected that she’d be asking to try it herself the next time.

He sucked in a deep breath when she reached her hand between them to slide her fingertips carefully over his length, experimentally testing the feel of the latex.

“It doesn’t hurt? Or bother you?”

“No,” he said, his hips bucking against her hand, seeking her touch.

“Okay,” she breathed, leaning up to kiss him, her lips lingering on his for a long moment. “Kylo?”

“Now,” he agreed, already knowing what she was going to ask and realizing that there was nothing to stop him anymore from sinking into her.

“Finally,” she said, arching eagerly up to meet him as he pushed forward slowly. He’d done his best to prepare her, but he knew that his cock was bigger than anything she’d ever experienced before, and he was afraid of hurting her if he went too quickly.

He kissed her deeply as he rocked into her, each little thrust of his hips earning him a breathy moan from low in her throat and another inch of precious space inside her. She was ready enough that it surprised him how easily she took him in, how encouraging and pleased her little noises were.

He wanted to be soft, but she had no patience, her legs were twined around his waist and holding him close as she begged him for more and harder and deeper and he gave it to her because how could he not? He’d do anything for her with her face so gloriously flushed and her hair all sweaty and perfect little pink lips moaning his name.

There was nothing fake or polished about her, she was unashamed and greedy, and her perfect little tits bounced just right as he fucked into her and he couldn’t believe that this was his life. That after everything he’d done and everything he’d seen, after he’d lived through Luke and Snoke and that hellhole of a prison for thirteen years…that now he was here, and he was with her and his cock was buried balls deep in the hottest and most welcoming cunt he’d ever seen.

He didn’t’ think he’d ever understand how it was possible that this perfect woman loved him, that she wanted him, that she’d given him her heart with the same eager fervor as she was now giving him her body.

He could feel her getting closer as he drove into her, each snap of his hips pushing her nearer. She was clenching around him, her hands scrambling for something to hold onto as she dug her nails into his back.

“You’re so fucking pretty,” he said, watching her face as the words broke over. “So good. It’s so good that you can take all of me like this. Did you know that?” 

She tossed her head back and forth on the pillows, a silent denial.

“I love you and I love this pretty cunt and how good it feels,” he insisted, and she clenched around him, her body getting hotter and wetter with each bit of praise. He worked himself inside her, discovering the angles that made her arch and moan. He found all of her sensitive places and the perfect speed, grinding into her so that each thrust pushed him in as deeply as she could take him .

“Come for me,” he urged. He wanted it, wanted to feel her as she lost control, but more than that he knew that  _ she _ wanted it. He could feel how close she was, how desperate.

She was tensing as she reached for it, trying to cross that final distance, and when he reached a hand between them to find the sensitive bud of her clit with his fingers, she came apart almost instantly.

The tight and rapid flutter of her cunt and the sound of her screaming his name as she came around him was enough to push him over the edge with her, his thrusts becoming erratic as he buried his face in the side of her neck and then drove in deep to spill himself inside her.

He held her there, both of them trembling and content as he pressed a ling of kisses across her cheek and down her neck, until he began to soften inside her.

“Sorry,” he said, kissing her softly as he pulled out of her. “I have to take care of this.”

The confusion cleared from her face when she watched him roll out of bed and take the condom off.

“I’ll be back,” he promised, heading out into the hallway to dispose of it in the trash can as she waited for him, her chin propped up in her hand. There was a happy smile on her face and she hadn’t moved at all when he came back.

“You know, we never even managed to take off my bra,” she said, reaching up to snap the thin strap against her shoulder.

“You were in a hurry,” he reminded her. “Beautiful and greedy little minx.”

She giggled but she didn’t deny it.

He flopped back in bed beside her and gave her a little smack on the ass. “Go pee,” he instructed, stopping her in the act of trying to curl back up against him.

“What? Why?”

“You just have to,” he explained. “It keeps you from getting UTI’s or whatever. From all the stuff we were just doing down there. Didn’t anyone ever tell you that?”

She shook her head, shrugging as she got to her feet. “All we ever got was the abstinence talk, you know?”

“They really didn’t teach you shit about anything, did they?”

She shook her head ruefully. “No, they really didn’t. But now I have you, so thank you for being so patient with me.”

“Rey.” He grabbed her hand as she walked by, not letting do until she stopped to look down at him. “There is nothing that I wouldn’t do for you. You’re the best thing that ever happened to me and I love you.”

“I love you, too,” she said grinning down at him and kissing him quickly before disappearing into the bathroom.

He watched her go, admiring the curve of her naked ass as she went. She hadn’t been gone long when he heard the shower turn on and he leaned back against the pillows to wait for her.

He’d nearly dozed off, his body relaxed and his mind lost in a pleasant hum of love and post sex glow, when her phone on the nightstand began to buzz. He glanced at the name and saw  _ Dad _ spelled out across the screen. He thought about answering it—he couldn’t avoid the man forever, after all—but the timing couldn’t possibly have been worse.

Would her father be able to tell what he’d just be doing to her? Would he be able to detect the subtle signs of pure masculine satisfaction in his voice?

Better not to risk it, he decided, setting the phone back down as he waited for Rey.

She would have to call him back, Kylo knew. Call him back and reassure him that she was fine, that she hadn’t been hurt. She’d have to go back to school, maybe work if she still wanted to. She’d want to go back to church.

Everything in their little apartment was perfect but the real world was out there, and it wouldn’t wait for them forever, wouldn’t wait for  _ Rey _ forever.

And she wouldn’t want it to.

He’d been in prison where all he had was her, but she’d been out here living a full and happy life. She had friends, family, a faith that was important to her.

He wasn’t sure suddenly how he would fit into that life, where there would be room for him beside all the other people that she loved.

She walked back into the room, a towel draped around her body and her wet hair brushed back away from her face. She looked happy and there was still a soft smile lingering at the corners of her mouth but he felt a hard knot of dread settle into the pit of his stomach.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you noticed that the chapter count went up again, please know that I am terrible at estimating chapter counts. I was trying to keep this story at about 100,000 words but that just isn't going to happen. It would cut things off at the knee and make the end feel rushed and terrible. So we've still got a lot to work through and I'll adjust stuff as needed.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading my work! I can be found on Twitter also, @Love_andbalance, so please come say hi or follow me for story news and updates!


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